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SELECT POEMS 



OF 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



Edited, with Notes, 

BY 

WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M., 

FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

WITH ENGRAVINGS. 







Y 



NEW YORK. 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

Harper & Brothers, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



P REFACE. 



The plan of this little book is similar to that of my edition of The 
Merchant of Venice and other of Shakespeare's plays. 

The text is based on Cunningham's, which is the most accurate of the 
recent editions. This has been carefully collated with Prior's, Corney's, 
and the "Globe" edition, and also with many of the early editions, for 
which I have been especially indebted to the Harvard College Library 
and to the Athenaeum and Public Libraries of Boston. Among these are 
the ist, 3d, 4th, and 13th editions of The Traveller, the 1st, 4th, and 7th 
(an American reprint in quarto, published at Springfield, Mass., 1783) 
of The Deserted Village, and the 4th of Retaliation. 

The 13th edition of The Traveller (in the Athenaeum library) contains 
some readings, including one entire couplet (see note on line 374), which 
I have found in no other edition, early or recent. This edition is un- 
dated, and bears no name of publisher or printer. The title-page is as 
follows : "The Traveller, or, A Prospect of Society. A Poem. By Dr. 
Goldsmith. The thirteenth edition. London : Printed for the Booksellers 
in Town and Country." 

The notes are fuller than in any other edition known to me. Many of 
them are original ; the rest have been drawn from every accessible source, 
credit being given in all cases where justice to others or to myself seemed 
to require it. 

Cambridge, July 30, 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH, by T. B. Macaulay 9 

SELECTIONS FROM OTHER MEMOIRS OF GOLDSMITH 28 

From Thackeray's " English Humourists " 28 

From " Random Recollections," by George Colman the 

Younger 35 

From Campbell's " British Poets " 36 

From Forster's Life of the Poet 39 

From Irving's Life of the Poet. 40 

THE TRAVELLER 47 

THE DESERTED VILLAGE 71 

RETALIATION 97 

NOTES 107 

The Traveller 109 

The Deserted "Tillage 122 

Retaliation 139 

INDEX 145 




LY.] 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. — [FROM A PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.] 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

By Thomas Babington Macaulay. 



Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most pleasing English 
writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protestant 
and Saxon family which had been long settled in Ireland, 
and which had, like most other Protestant and Saxon fam- 
ilies, been in troubled times harassed and put in fear by the 
native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, studied 
in the reign of Queen Anne at the diocesan school of Elphin, 
became attached to the daughter of the schoolmaster, mar- 
ried her, took orders, and settled at a place called Pallas in 
the County of Longford. There he with difficulty support- 
ed his wife and children on what he could earn, partly as a 
curate and partly as a farmer. 

At Pallas Oliver Goldsmith was born in November, 1728. 
That spot was then, for all practical purposes, almost as re- 
mote from the busy and splendid capital in which his later 



IO 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



years were passed as any clearing in Upper Canada or any 
sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day those 
enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the birth- 
place of the poet are forced to perform the latter part of 
their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any high- 
road, on a dreary plain, which in wet weather is often a 
lake. The lanes would break any jaunting-car to pieces; 
and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most 
strongly built wheels cannot be dragged. 

When Oliver was still a child his father was presented to 
a living worth about ^200 a year in the County of West- 
meath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the 
wilderness for a spacious house on a frequented road, near 
the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters 
by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh year to a vil- 
lage school kept by an old quartermaster on half-pay, who 
professed to teach nothing but reading, writing, and arith- 
metic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories about 
ghosts, banshees, and fairie^, about the great Rapparee chiefs, 
Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and about the ex- 
ploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the surprise of Mon- 
juich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. This man must 
have been of the Protestant religion ; but he was of the ab- 
original race, and not only spoke the Irish language, but 
could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. Oliver early 
became, and through life continued to be, a passionate ad- 
mirer of the Irish music, and especially of the compositions 
of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose harp he heard. 
It ought to be added that Oliver, though by birth one of the 
Englishry, and though connected by numerous ties with the 
Established Church, never showed the least sign of that con- 
temptuous antipathy with which in his days the ruling mi- 
nority in Ireland too generally regarded the subject majority. 
So far indeed was he from sharing in the opinions and feel- 
ings of the caste to which he belonged that he conceived an 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Ir 

aversion to the Glorious and Immortal Memory, and, even 
when George the Third was on the throne, maintained that 
nothing but the restoration of the banished dynasty could 
save the country. 

From the humble academy kept by the old soldier Gold- 
smith was removed in his ninth year. He went to several 
grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the ancient 
languages. His life at this time seems to have been far from 
happy. He had, as appears from the admirable portrait of 
him at Knowle, features harsh even to ugliness. The small- 
pox had set its mark upon him with more than usual severity. 
His stature was small, and his limbs ill put together. Among 
boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects ; and the 
ridicule excited by poor Oliver's appearance was heightened 
by a peculiar simplicity and a disposition to blunder which 
he retained to the last. He became the common butt of 
boys and masters, was pointed at as a fright in the play- 
ground, and flogged as a dunce in the school-room. When 
he had risen to eminence, those who once derided him ran- 
sacked their memory for the events of his early years, and 
recited repartees and couplets which had dropped from him, 
and which, though little noticed at the time, were supposed, 
a quarter of a century later, to indicate the powers which 
produced The Vicar of Wakefield and 2 n he Deserted Village. 

In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, 
Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and 
tuition, and very little for lodging ; but they had to perform 
some menial services, from which they have long been re- 
lieved. They swept the court; they carried up the dinner to 
the fellows' table, and changed the plates and poured out the 
ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quartered 
not alone, in a garret, on the window of which his name, 
scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. From such 
garrets many men of less parts than his have made their way 
to the woolsack or to the episcopal bench. But Goldsmith, 



12 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



while he suffered all the humiliations, threw away all the 
advantages of his situation. He neglected the studies of 
the place, stood low at the examinations, was turned down 
to the bottom of his class for playing the buffoon in the 
lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for pumping on a 
constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor for giving a 
ball in the attic story of the college to some gay youths and 
damsels from the city. 

While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided between 
squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father died, leav- 
ing a mere pittance. The youth obtained his bachelor's de- 
gree, and left the university. During some time the humble 
dwelling to which his widowed mother had retired was his 
home. He was now in his twenty-first year ; it was neces- 
sary that he should do something; and his edu- 
cation seemed to have fitted him to do nothing 
but to dress himself in gaudy colours, of which he 
was as fond as a magpie, to take a hand at cards, 
to sing Irish airs, to play the flute, to angle in 
summer, and to tell ghost stories by the fire in 
winter. He tried five or six professions in turn 
without success. He applied for ordi- 
nation; but, as he applied in scarlet 
clothes, he was speedily turned out of 
the episcopal palace. He then 
became tutor in an opulent 
family, but soon quitted his 
situation in consequence 
of a dispute about play. 
Then he determined to 
emigrate to America. His 
relations, with much sat- _j 
isfaction, saw him set i 
out for Cork on a good 
horse, with thirty pounds 




OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



*3 



in his pocket. But in six weeks he came back on a misera- 
ble hack without a penny, and informed his mother that the 
ship in which he had taken his passage, having got a fair 
wind while he was at a party of pleasure, had sailed with- 
out him. Then he resolved to study the law. A generous 
kinsman advanced fifty pounds. With this sum Goldsmith 
went to Dublin, was enticed into a gambling- house, and 
lost every shilling. He then thought of medicine. A small 
purse was made up; and in his twenty-fourth year he was 
sent to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen 
months in nominal attendance on lectures, and picked up 
some superficial information about chemistry and natural 
history. Thence he went to Leyden, still pretending to 
study physic. He left that celebrated university — the third 
university at which he had resided — in his twenty-seventh 
year, without a degree, with the merest smattering of medi- 
cal knowledge, and with no property but his clothes and his 
flute. His flute, however, proved a useful friend. He ram- 
bled on foot through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, 
playing tunes which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, 
and which often procured for him a supper and a bed. He 
wandered as far as Italy. His musical performances, in- 
deed, were not to the taste of the Italians ; but he contrived 
to live on the alms which he obtained at the gates of con- 
vents. . . . 

In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shilling, 
without a friend, and without a calling. He had, indeed, if 
his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, obtained from 
the University of Padua a doctor's degree ; but this dignity 
proved utterly useless to him. In England his flute was not 
in request; there were no convents; and he was forced to 
have recourse to a series of desperate expedients. He turn- 
ed strolling player ; but his face and figure were ill-suited to 
the boards even of the humblest theatre. He pounded drugs 
and ran about London with phials for charitable chemists. 



14 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



He joined a swarm of beggars, which made its nest in Axe 
Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, and felt the 
miseries and humiliations of this situation so keenly that he 
thought it a promotion to be permitted to earn his bread as 
a bookseller's hack ; but he soon found the new yoke more 
galling than the old one, and was glad to become an usher 
again. He obtained a medical appointment in the service 
of the East India Company ; but the appointment was speed- 
ily revoked. Why it was revoked we are not told. The sub- 
ject was one on which he never liked to talk. It is probable 
that he was incompetent to perform the duties of the place. 
Then he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for examina- 
tion as mate to a naval hospital. Even to so humble a post 
he was found unequal. By this time the schoolmaster whom 
he had served for a morsel of food and the third part of a 
bed was no more. Nothing remained but to return to the 
lowest drudgery of literature. Goldsmith took a garret in a 




IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 15 

miserable court, to which he had to climb from the brink of 
Fleet Ditch by a dizzy ladder of flagstones called Breakneck 
Steps. The court and the ascent have long disappeared; 
but old Londoners well remember both. Here, at thirty, 
the unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a galley-slave. 
In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some 
things which have survived, and many which have perished. 
He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspa- 
pers ; children's books, which, bound in gilt paper and adorn- 
ed with hideous wood-cuts, appeared in the window of the 
once far-famed shop at the corner of Saint Paul's Church- 
yard; An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe, 
which, though of little or no value, is still* reprinted among 
his works ; a Life of Beau Nash, which is not reprinted,* 
though it well deserves to be so ; a superficial and incorrect, 
but very readable, History of England, in a series of letters 
purporting to be addressed by a nobleman to his son ; and 
some very lively and amusing Sketches of London Society, in 
a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a Chinese 
traveller to his friends. All these works were anonymous; 
but some of them were well known to be Goldsmith's ; and 
he gradually rose in the estimation of the booksellers for 
whom he drudged. He was, indeed, emphatically a popular 
writer. For accurate research or grave disquisition he was 
not well qualified by nature or by education. He knew 
nothing accurately : his reading had been desultory ; nor 
had he meditated deeply on what he had read. He had 
seen much of the world ; but he had noticed and retained 
little more of what he had seen than some grotesque in- 
cidents and characters which happened to strike his fancy. 
But, though his mind was very scantily stored with materials, 

* The Life of Nash has been reprinted at least three times : in Prior's 
edition (vol. iii. p. 249) ; in Cunningham's (vol. iv. p. 35) ; and in the 
" Globe" edition (p. 513). This last, however, has appeared (1869) since 
Macaulay wrote the above. 



r 6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce 
a wonderful effect. There have been many greater writers; 
but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. 
His style was always pure and easy, and on proper occasions 
pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, 
his descriptions always grotesque, his humour rich and joy- 
ous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. 
About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there 
was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be ex- 
pected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed 
among thieves and beggars, street-walkers and merry-andrews, 
in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals. 

As his name gradually became known, the circle of his 
acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who 
was then considered as the first of living English writers ; to 
Reynolds, the first of English painters ; and to Burke, who 
had not yet entered Parliament, but had distinguished him- 
self greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his con- 
versation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became in- 
timate. In 1763 he was one of the nine original members 
of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been called 
the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed that epi- 
thet, and still glories in the simple name of The Club. 

By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwelling 
at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers in 
the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. But he was 
still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close of 
1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his landlady one 
morning called in the help of a sheriffs officer. The debtor, 
in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson ; and 
Johnson, always friendly, though often surly, sent back the 
messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. 
He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, 
and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. 
Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his friend 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



17 



to consider calmly how money was to be procured. Gold- 
smith said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson 
glanced at the manuscript, saw that there were good things 




JOHNSON READING " THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.' 

in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it for £60, and soon return- 
ed with the money. The rent was paid, and the sheriff's 
officer withdrew. According to one story, Goldsmith gave 
his landlady a sharp reprimand for her treatment of him ; 
according to another, he insisted on her joining him in a 
bowl of punch. Both stories are probably true. The novel 
which was thus ushered into the world was The Vicar of 
Wakefield. 

But before The Vicar of Wakefield appeared in print came 
the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In Christmas 
week, 1764, he published a poem, entitled The Traveller. It 

B 



x g OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

was the first work to which he had put his name ; and it at 
once raised him to the rank of a legitimate English classic. 
The opinion of the most skilful critics was that nothing finer 
had appeared in verse since the fourth book of The Dunciad. 
In one respect The Traveller differs from all Goldsmith's other 
writings. In general his designs were bad, and his execution 
good. ' In The Traveller the execution, though deserving of 
much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical 
poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the 
same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a 
crag among the Alps, near the point where three great coun- 
tries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews 
his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of cli- 
mate, of government, of religion, of national character, which 
he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just^or unjust, 
that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and 
much on the temper and regulation of our minds. 

While the fourth edition of The Traveller was on the coun- 
ters of the booksellers, The Vicar of Wakefield appeared, and 
rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to our 
own time, and which is likely to last as long as our lan- 
guage. ... 

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist 
emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He wrote 
The Good-Natured Man — a piece which had a worse fate than 
it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at Drury Lane. 
It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly re- 
ceived. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, 
and by the sale of the copyright, not less than ^"500 — five 
times as much as he had made by The Traveller and The Vicar 
of Wakefield. The plot of The Good-Natured Man is, like 
almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill-constructed. But some 
passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much more ludicrous, 
indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time. A 
canting, mawkish play, entitled False Delicacy, had just had 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



19 



an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. Dur- 
ing some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at 
tragedies ; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to 
any thing more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. 
It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in The 
Good-Natured Man, that in which Miss Richland finds her 
lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full 
court - dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and 
should have been omitted after the first night. 

In 1770 appeared The Deserted Village. In mere diction 
and versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps 
superior, to The Traveller, and it is generally preferred to The 
Traveller by that large class of readers who think, with Bayes 
in The Rehearsal, that the only use of a plan is to bring in 
fine things. More discerning judges, however, while they 
admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by one unpar- 
donable fault which pervades the whole.'. . . It is made up 
of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true 
English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. 
The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought 
close together belong to two different countries, and to two 
different stages in the progress of society. He had assured- 
ly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such 
a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his Auburn. He 
had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of 
such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and 
forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he 
had probably seen in Kent ; the ejectment he had probably 
seen in Munster; but by joining the two he has produced 
something which never was and never will be seen in any 
part of the world. 

In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden 
with a second play, She Stoops to Conquer. The manager 
was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece 
out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Goldsmith's 



2 o OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

comedies were not sentimental. The Good-Natitred Man 
had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of The Good- 
Natured Man was sober when compared with the rich droll- 
ery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an incom- 
parable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, gen- 
ius triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleries were in a constant 
roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and Cum- 
berland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced 
by a general cry of " Turn him out," or " Throw him over." 
Two generations have since confirmed the verdict which 
was pronounced on that night. 

While Goldsmith was writing The Deserted Village and 
She Stoops to Cofiquer, he was employed on works of a very 
different kind — works from which he derived little reputation 
but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools a His- 
tory of Rome, by which he made ^300; a .History of England, 
by which he made £600; a History of Greece, for which he" 
received ^250; a Natural History, for which the booksellers 
covenanted to pay him 800 guineas. These works he pro- 
duced without any elaborate research, by merely selecting, 
abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and flow- 
ing language what he found in books well known to the 
world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He 
committed some strange blunders; for he knew nothing 
with accuracy. Thus in his History of Eftgland he tells us 
that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he correct this mistake 
when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly hoaxed 
into putting into The History of Greece an account of a bat- 
tle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. In his 
Animated Nature he relates, with faith and with perfect grav- 
ity, all the most absurd lies which he could find in books of 
travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach ser- 
mons, nightingales that repeat long conversations. "If he 
can tell a horse from a cow," says Johnson, " that is the ex- 
tent of his knowledge of zoology." How little Goldsmith 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 21 

was qualified to write about the physical sciences is suffi- 
ciently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion de- 
nied that the sun is longer in the northern than in the south- 
ern signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Maupertuis. 
" Maupertuis !" he cried, " I understand those matters better 
than Maupertuis." On another occasion he, in defiance of 
the evidence of his own senses, maintained obstinately, and 
even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by moving his upper 
jaw. 

Yet, ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done 
more to make the first steps in the laborious road to knowl- 
edge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely dis- 
tinguished from the compilations of ordinary book-makers. 
He was a great, perhaps an unequalled, master of the arts of 
selection and condensation. In these respects his histories 
of Rome and of England, and still more his own abridg- 
ments of these histories, well deserve to be studied. In 
general nothing is less attractive than an epitome; but the 
epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are always 
amusing; and to read them is considered by intelligent chil- 
dren not as a task but as a pleasure. 

Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. 
He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what to 
one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must have 
been luxury. His fame was great and was constantly ris- 
ing. He lived in what was intellectually far the best soci- 
ety of the kingdom — in a society in which no talent or ac- 
complishment was wanting, and in which the art of conver- 
sation was cultivated with splendid success. There prob- 
ably were never four talkers more admirable in four differ- 
ent ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick; and 
Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with all the four. He 
aspired to share in their colloquial renown ; but never was 
ambition more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a 
man who wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace 



22 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

should have been, whenever he took a part in conversation, 
an empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the 
evidence is overwhelming. So extraordinary was the con- 
trast between Goldsmith's published works and the silly 
things which he said, that Horace Walpole described him 
as an inspired idiot. " Noll," said Garrick, " wrote like an 
angel, and talked like poor Pol." Chamier declared that 
it was a hard exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a 
chatterer could have really written The Traveller. Even Bos- 
well could say, with contemptuous compassion, that he liked 
very well to hear honest Goldsmith run on. "Yes, sir," 
said Johnson, "but he should not like to hear himself." 
Minds differ as rivers differ. There are transparent and 
sparkling rivers from which it is delightful, to drink as they 
flow; to such rivers the minds of such men as Burke and 
Johnson may be compared. But there are rivers of which 
the water when first drawn is turbid and noisome, but be- 
comes pellucid as crystal and delicious to the taste if it be 
suffered to stand till it has deposited a sediment; and such 
a river is a type of the mind of Goldsmith. His first thoughts 
on every subject were confused even to absurdity, but they 
required only a little time to work themselves clear. When 
he wrote they had that time, and therefore his readers pro- 
nounced him a man of genius ; but when he talked he talked 
nonsense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hear- 
ers. He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conver- 
sation ; he felt every failure keenly ; yet he had not suffi- 
cient judgment and self-command to hold his tongue. His 
animal spirits and vanity were always impelling him to try 
to do the one thing which he could not do. After every at- 
tempt he felt that he had exposed himself, and writhed with 
shame and vexation ; yet the next moment he began again. 

His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, 
which, in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not 
unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his char- 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 23 

acter much to love, but very little to respect. His heart 
was soft, even to weakness; he was so generous that he quite 
forgot to be just; he forgave injuries so readily that he 
might be said to invite them ; and was so liberal to beggars 
that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. He 
was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice 
of a darker shade was imputed to him — envy. But there is 
not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, though 
it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, 
ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation 
of any of his rivals. The truth probably is that he was not 
more envious, but merely less prudent than his neighbours. 
His heart was on his lips. All those small jealousies which 
are but too common among men of letters, but which a man 
of letters who is also a man of the world does his best to 
conceal, Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of a child. . . . 
He was neither ill-natured enough nor long-headed enough 
to be guilty of any malicious act which required contrivance 
and disguise. 

Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of 
genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle 
with difficulties which at last broke his heart. But no rep- 
resentation can be more remote from the truth. He did, 
indeed, go through much sharp misery before he had done 
any thing considerable in literature. But after his name 
had appeared on the title-page of The Traveller, he had none 
but himself to blame for his distresses. His average income 
during the last seven years of his life certainly exceeded 
^400 a year, and ^400 a year ranked among the incomes 
of that day at least as high as ;£8oo a year would rank at 
present. A single man living in the Temple with ^400 a 
year might then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the 
young gentlemen of good families who were studying the 
law there had so much. But all the wealth which Lord 
Clive had brought from Bengal and Sir Lawrence Dundas 



24 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

from Germany joined together would not have sufficed for 
Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He wore 
fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid court to 
venal beauties. He had also, it should be remembered to 
the honour of his heart, though not of his head, a guinea, or 
five, or ten, according to the state of his purse, ready for any 
tale of distress, true or false. But it was not in dress or 
feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous charities, 
that his chief expense lay. He had been from boyhood a 
gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the most un- 
skilful of gamblers.* For a time he put off the day of inev- 
itable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained advances 
from booksellers by promising to execute works which he 
never began. But at length this source of supply failed. 
He owed more than ^2000, and he saw no hope of extrica- 
tion from his embarrassments. His spirits and health gave 
way. He was attacked by a nervous fever, which he thought 
himself competent to treat. It would have been happy for 
him if his medical skill had been appreciated as justly by 
himself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree which he 
pretended to have received at Padua, he could procure no 
patients. "I do not practice," he once said; "I make it 
a rule to prescribe only for my friends." " Pray, dear Doc- 
tor," said Beauclerk, " alter your rule, and prescribe only 
for your enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite of this excel- 
lent advice, prescribed for himself. The remedy aggravated 
the malady. The sick man was induced to call in real phy- 
sicians, and they at one time imagined that they had cured 
the disease. Still his weakness and restlessness continued. 
He could get no sleep ; he could take no food. " You are 
worse," said one of his medical attendants, " than you should 
be from the degree of fever which you have. Is your mind 
at ease ?" " No, it is not," were the last recorded words of 
Oliver Goldsmith. He died on the 3d of April, 1774, in his 
* See extract from Irving, p. 140. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 2 5 

forty -sixth year. He was laid in the churchyard of the 
Temple ; but the spot was not marked by any inscription, 
and is now forgotten. The coffin was followed by Burke 
and Reynolds. Both these great men were sincere mourn- 
ers. Burke, when he heard of Goldsmith's death, had burst 
into a flood of tears. Reynolds had been so much moved 
by the news that he had flung aside his brush and pallet 
for the day. 

A short time after Goldsmith's death a little poem ap- 
peared, which will, as long as our language lasts, associate 
the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. It 
has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly 
the sarcasm which his wild, blundering talk brought upon 
him. He was, not long before his last illness, provoked 
into retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen, and 
at that weapon he proved himself a match for air his as- 
sailants together. Within a small compass .he drew with 
a singularly easy and vigorous pencil the characters of 
nine or ten of his intimate associates. Though this little 
work did not receive his last touches, it must always be 
regarded as a masterpiece. It is impossible, however, not 
to wish that four or five likenesses which have no interest 
for posterity were wanting to that noble gallery, and that 
their places were supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gib- 
bon, as happy and vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garrick. 
^ Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honoured him 
with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekens was the 
sculptor, and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is much to 
be lamented that Johnson did not leave to posterity a more 
durable and a more valuable memorial of his friend. A life 
of Goldsmith would have been an inestimable addition to 
the Lives of the Poets. No man appreciated Goldsmith's 
writings more justly than Johnson; no man was better ac- 
quainted with Goldsmith's character and habits; and no 
man was more competent to delineate with truth and spirit 



26 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were found 
in company with great weaknesses. But the list of poets to 
whose works Johnson was requested by the booksellers to 
furnish prefaces ended with Lyttleton, who died in 1773. 
The line seems to have been drawn expressly for the pur- 
pose of excluding the person whose portrait would have 
most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, however, has been 
fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his life 
has been written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, 
and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves 
great praise ; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always 
pleasing ; but the highest place must in justice be assigned 
to the eminently interesting work of Mr. Forster. 




'oetas, Jrnysici, 

GOLDSMITH'S MONUMENT IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 



The Tablet is over the south door in Poets' Corner, between the 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 2 y 

monuments of Gay and the Duke of Argyll. The Latin inscription 
upon it is as follows : 

Olivarii Goldsmith, 

Poetae, Physici, Historic], 

Qui nullum fere scribendi genus 

Non tetigit, 

Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit : 

Sive risus essent movendi, 

Sive lacrymae, 

Affectuum potens at lenis dominator : 

Ingenio sublimis, vividus, versatilis, 

Oratione grandis, nitidus, venustus : 

Hoc monumento memoriam coluit 

Sodalium amor, 

Amicorum fides, 

Lectorum veneratio. 

Natus in Hibernia, Fornias Longfordiensis 

In loco cui nomen Pallas, 

Nov. xxix. MDCCXXXI. 

Eblanae literis institutus ; 

Obiit Londini, 

Apr. iv. mdcclxxiv. 



Of Oliver Goldsmith — 

Poet, Naturalist, Historian, 

"Who left scarcely any kind of writing ' 

Untouched, 

And touched nothing that he did not adorn : 

Whether smiles were to be stirred 

Or tears, 

Commanding our emotions, yet a gentle master: 

In genius lofty, lively, versatile, 

In style weighty, clear, engaging — 

The memory in this monument is cherished 

By the love of Companions, 

The faithfulness of Friends, 

The reverence of Readers. 

He was born in Ireland, 

At a place called Pallas, 

[In the parish] of Forney, [and county] of Longford, 

On Nov. 29th, 1 73 1. 

Trained in letters at Dublin. 

Died in London, 

April 4th, 1774. 




HOGARTH'S PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH. 



SELECTIONS FROM OTHER MEMOIRS OF 
GOLDSMITH. 



FROM THACKERAY'S " ENGLISH HUMOURISTS." * 

Who of the millions whom he has amused does not love 
him ? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a 
title that is for a man !f A wild youth, wayward but full of 

* The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century. A Series of 
Lectures. By W. M. Thackeray. Harper's edition, p. 248 foil. 

t " He was a friend to virtue, and in his most playful pages never for- 
gets what is due to it. A gentleness, delicacy, and purity of feeling dis- 
tinguishes whatever he wrote, and bears a correspondence to the gener- 
osity of a disposition which knew no bounds but his last guinea. . . . 

" The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleas- 
ing truth with which the principal characters are designed, make The 
Vicar of Wakefield one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious com- 
position on which the human mind was ever employed. . . . 

" We read The Vicar of Wakefield in youth and in age ; we return to 
it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so 
well to reconcile us to human nature." — Sir Walter Scott. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 29 

tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his 
boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, 
in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and 
achieve name and fortune; and after years of dire struggle, 
and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to 
his native place as it had longed eagerly for change when 
sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the rec- 
ollections and feelings of home — he paints the friends and 
scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with 
remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries 
away a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. 
His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change: as on 
the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes 
to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing 
yesterday's elegy; and he would fly away this hour, but 
that a cage necessity keeps him. What is the charm of his 
verse, of his style and humour? His sweet regrets, his deli- 
cate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the 
weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. 
You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet 
minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant 
harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon — 
save the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he 
delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in 
the tents or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and 
children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings 
his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story 
of The Vicar of Wakefield he has found entry into every 
castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however 
busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an 
evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful 
music. . . . 

The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, 
and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell 
foul of poor little Oliver's face when the child was eight 



3° 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. 
An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, 
and pronounced him a dunce. Paddy Byrne, the hedge- 
schoolmaster, took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne he 
was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child 
was sent to school in those days, the classic phrase was that 
he was placed under Mr. So-and-So's ferule. Poor little 
ancestors ! It is hard to think how ruthlessly you were 
birched; and how much of needless whipping and tears our 
small forefathers had to undergo ! A relative, kind Uncle 
Contarine, took the main charge of little Noll, who went 
through his school-days righteously, doing as little work as 
he could ; robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his 
pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. 
Everybody knows the story of that famous " Mistake of a 
Night," when the young school-boy, provided with a guinea 
and a nag, rode up to the "best house" in Ardagh, called 
for the landlord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, 
and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning, and found 
when he asked for the bill that the best house was Squire 
Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. 
Who does not know every story about Goldsmith? That 
is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and 
capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler 
gibed at him for his ugliness — and called him ^Esop, and 
little Noll made his repartee of " Heralds proclaim aloud 
this saying — see ^Esop dancing and his monkey playing." 
One can fancy the queer, pitiful look of humour and appeal 
from that little scarred face — the funny little dancing figure, 
the funny little brogue. In his life, and his writings, which 
are the honest expression of it, he is constantly bewailing 
that homely face and person; anon he surveys them in the 
glass ruefully, and presently assumes the most comical dig- 
nity. . . . 

I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



31 



enabled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, 
always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly 
benevolence and love of truth intact, as if these treasures 
had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he was 
accountable to posterity for their honourable employ; and 
a constancy equally happy and admirable I think was shown 
by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed 
kindly always in the midst of a life's storm and rain and 
bitter weather.* The poor fellow was never so friendless 
but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and 




NIGHT WANDERINGS. 



* " An ' inspired idiot,' Goldsmith, hangs strangely about him [John- 
son]. . . . Yet, on the whole, there is no evil in the ' gooseberry-fool,' 
but rather much good ; of a finer, if of a weaker sort than Johnson's ; 
and all the more genuine that he himself could never become conscious 
of it — though, unhappily, never cease attempting to become so : the author 



32 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

wretched but he could give of his crust and speak his word 
of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give 
that, and make the children happy in the dreary London 
court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle 
we read of to his poor neighbour; he could give away his 
blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as 
he best might in .the feathers; he could pawn his coat to 
save his landlord from jail; when he was a school-usher, 
he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the good- 
natured schoolmaster's wife said justly that she ought to keep 
Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. 
When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy 
the Doctor but he must treat them still. " Have you seen 
the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds ?" he asked of one 
of his old pupils. "Not seen it? not bought it? Sure, Jack, 
if your picture had been published, I'd not have been with- 
out it half an hour." His purse and his heart were every- 
body's, and his friends' as much as his own. When he was 
at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumber- 
land, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could 
be of any service to Dr. Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommend- 
ed his brother, and not himself, to the great man. "My 
patrons," he gallantly said, " are the booksellers, and I want 
no others." Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did; 
but he did not complain much. If in his early writings some 
bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and pov- 
erty, he withdrew these expressions when his works were re- 
published, and better days seemed to open for him ; and he 
did not care to complain that printer or publisher had over- 
looked his merit or left him poor. The Court face was 
turned from honest Oliver — the Court patronized Beattie; 
the fashion did not shine on him — fashion adored Sterne. 

of the genuine Vicar of Wakefield, nill he will he, must needs fly towards 
such a mass of genuine manhood." — Carlyle's Essays (second edition), 
vol. iv. p. 91. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



33 



Fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy 
of his day. A little — not ill-humour, but plaintiveness — 
a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed render 
him not the less amiable. The author of The Vicar of Wake- 
field had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the 
MS. for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with 
Sterne; a little angry when Coleman's actors declined their 
parts in his delightful comedy, when the manager refused to 
have a scene painted for it, and pronounced its damnation 
before hearing. He had not the great public with him; 
but he had the noble Johnson, and the admirable Reynolds, 




DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. — [FROM a PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, 1778.] 

and the great Gibbon, and the great Burke, and the great 
Fox — friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as 
those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope's table. 

C 



34 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper 
kept no account of all the pains which he endured during 
the early period of his literary career. Should any man of 
letters in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant 
he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a 
pure, kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore 
in his breast. The insults to which he had to submit are 
shocking to read of— slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal 
malignity perverting his commonest motives and actions : he 
had his share of these, and one's anger is roused at reading 
of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child as- 
saulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and 
weak and full of love should have had to suffer so. And 
he had worse than insult to undergo — to own to fault, and 
deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a letter of his ex- 
tant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith 
is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are 
in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been 
forced to borrow money. " He was wild, sir," Johnson said, 
speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with" his great, wise be- 
nevolence and noble mercifulness of heart — " Dr. Goldsmith 
was wild, sir; but he is so no more." Ah! if we pity the 
good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal 
very gently with him from whom misery extorts not only 
tears, but shame; let us think humbly and charitably of the 
human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose 
turn may it be to-morrow? What weak heart, confident 
before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible ? 
Cover the good man who has been vanquished — cover his 
face and pass on. ... 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like; but 
merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes 
out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. 
Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave ; think 
of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him ; think 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



35 



of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph — and of the won- 
derful and unanimous response of affection with which the 
world has paid back the love he gave it. His humour de- 
lighting us still; his song fresh and beautiful as when first 
he charmed with it; his words in all our mouths; his very- 
weaknesses beloved and familiar — his benevolent spirit seems 
still to smile upon us; to do gentle kindnesses; to succour 
with sweet charity; to soothe, caress, and forgive; to plead 
with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. 



FROM "RANDOM RECOLLECTIONS," BY GEORGE COLMAN THE 

YOUNGER.* 

I was only five years old when Goldsmith took me on his 
knee, while he was drinking coffee one evening with my 
father, and began to play with me, which amiable act I re- 
turned with the ingratitude of a peevish brat by giving him 
a very smart slap in the face; it must have been a tingler, 
for it left the marks of my little spiteful paw upon his cheek. 
This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and 
I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room 
to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I be- 
gan to howl and scream most abominably... . . At length a 
generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy ; . . . 
it was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle 
in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was 
still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked 
and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed until I began to 
brighten. Goldsmith, who in regard to children was like 
the Village Preacher he has so beautifully described — for 

"Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distress'd" — 

seized the propitious moment of returning good-humour; so 
he put down the candle and began to conjure. He placed 

* Vol. i. p. 63. 



3 6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

three hats which happened to be in the room upon the car- 
pet, and a shilling under each ; the shillings, he told me, were 
England, France, and Spain. "Hey, presto, cockolorum!" 
cried the Doctor; and, lo! on uncovering the shillings, which 
had been dispersed, each beneath a separate hat, they were 
all found congregated under one. I was no politician at five 
years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the 
sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain 
all under one crown; but, as I was also no conjurer, it 
amazed me beyond measure. . . . From that time, whenever 
the Doctor -came to visit my father, 

"I pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile;" 

a game of romps constantly ensued, and we were always cor- 
dial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companion- 
ship varied somewhat in point of sports as I grew older, but 
it did not last long; my senior playmate died, alas! in his 
forty-fifth year, some months after I had attained my eleventh. 
His death, it has been thought, was hastened by " mental in- 
quietude." If this supposition be true, never did the tur- 
moils of life subdue a mind more warm with sympathy for 
the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures. But his character is 
familiar to every *me who reads. In all the numerous ac- 
counts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, 
his knowledge of nature and his ignorance of the world, his 
"compassion for another's woe" was always predominant; 
and my trivial story of his humouring a froward child weighs 
but a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence. 



FROM CAMPBELL'S "BRITISH POETS."* 

Goldsmith's poetry enjoys a calm and steady popularity. 
It inspires us, indeed, with no admiration of daring design 
or of fertile invention ; but it presents, within its narrow 

* Specimens of the British Poets, Cunningham's edit., London, 1841. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



37 



limits, a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightful- 
ness. His descriptions and sentiments have the pure zest 
of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct 
without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual com- 
posure in his manner, which may in some passages be said 
to approach to the reserved and prosaic ; but he unbends 
from this graver strain of reflection to tenderness, and even 
to playfulness, with an ease and grace almost exclusively his 
own, and connects extensive views of the happiness and in- 
terests of society with pictures of life that touch' the heart 
by their familiarity. His language is certainly simple, 
though it is not cast in a rugged or careless mould. He is 
no disciple of the gaunt and famished school of simplicity. 
Deliberately as he wrote, he can not be accused of wanting 
natural and idiomatic expression; but still it is select and 
refined expression. He uses the ornaments which must 
always distinguish true poetry from prose ; and when he 
adopts colloquial plainness, it is with the utmost care and 
skill to avoid a vulgar humility. There is more of this sus- 
tained simplicity, of this chaste economy and choice of 
words, in Goldsmith than in any modern poet, or perhaps 
than would be attainable or desirable as a standard for 
every writer of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such 
a style would be too difficult. There is a noble propriety 
even in the careless strength of great poems, as in the rough- 
ness of castle walls ; and, generally speaking, where there is 
a long course of story or observation of life to be pursued, 
such exquisite touches as those of Goldsmith would be too 
costly materials for sustaining it. But let us not imagine 
that the serene graces of this poet were not admirably 
adapted to his subjects. His poetry is not that of impetu- 
ous, but of contemplative sensibility; of a spirit breathing 
its regrets and recollections in a tone that has no disso- 
nance with the calm of philosophical reflection. He takes 
rather elevated speculative views of the causes of good and 



38 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

evil in society; at the same time the objects which are most 
endeared to his imagination are those of familiar and simple 
interest; and the domestic affections may be said to be the 
only genii of his romance. The tendency towards abstract- 
ed observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly with the com- 
pendious form of expression which he studied ;* while the 
home-felt joys, on which his fancy loved to repose, required 
at once the chastest and sweetest colours of language to 
make them harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical 
poem. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and 
reflection, which gives back the image of nature unruffled 
and minutely. He has no redundant thoughts or false 
transports ; but seems on every occasion to have weighed 
the impulse to which he surrendered himself. Whatever 
ardour or casual felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he 
gained a high degree of purity and self-possession. His 
chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist, and throws 
a charm of Claude-like softness over his descriptions of 
homely objects that would seem only fit to be the subjects 
of Dutch painting. But his quiet enthusiasm leads the af- 
fections to humble things without a vulgar association; and 
he inspires us with a fondness to trace the simplest recol- 
lections of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its ale- 
house and listen to 

" The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door." 

He betrays so little effort to make us visionary by the 
usual and palpable fictions of his art; he keeps apparently 
so close to realities, and draws certain conclusions respect- 
ing the radical interests of man so boldly and decidedly, 

* There is perhaps no couplet in English rhyme more perspicuously 
condensed than those two lines of The Traveller in which he describes 
the once flattering, vain, and happy character of the French : 

" They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem, 
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem." 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



39 



that we pay him a compliment, not always extended to the 
tuneful tribe — that of judging his sentiments by their strict 
and logical interpretation. In thus judging him by the test 
of his philosophical spirit, I am not prepared to say that he 
is a purely impartial theorist. He advances general posi- 
tions respecting the happiness of society, founded on limited 
views of truth, and under the bias of local feelings. He 
contemplates only one side of the question. It must be al- 
ways thus in poetry. Let the mind be ever so tranquilly 
disposed to reflection, yet if it retain poetical sensation^ it 
will embrace only those speculative opinions that fall in 
with the tone of the imagination. Yet I am not disposed 
to consider his principles as absurd, or his representations 
of life as the mere reveries of fancy. 



FROM FORSTER'S LIFE OF THE POET.* 

Of the many clever and indeed wonderful writings that 
from age to age are poured forth into the world, what is it 
that puts upon the few the stamp of immortality, and makes 
them seem indestructible as nature ? What is it but their 
wise rejection of everything superfluous ? — being grave his- 
tories, or natural stories, of everything that is ?wt history or 
nature ? — being poems, of everything that is not poetry, how- 
ever much it may resemble it; and especially of that prodi- 
gal accumulation of thoughts and images which, till proper- 
ly sifted and selected, is as the unhewn to the chiselled mar- 
ble ? What is it, in short, but that unity, completeness, pol- 
ish, and perfectness in every part which Goldsmith attained ? 
It may be said that his range is limited, and that, whether 
in his poetry or his prose, he seldom wanders far from the 
ground of his own experience; but within that circle how 
potent is his -magic, what a command it exercises over the 
happiest forms of art, with what a versatile grace it moves 

* Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, by John Forster, vol. i. p. 228. 



4 o OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

between what saddens us in humour or smiles on us in grief, 
and how unerring our response of laughter or of tears ! Thus, 
his pictures may be small; may be far from historical pieces, 
amazing or confounding us ; may be even, if severest criti- 
cism will have it so, mere happy tableaux de genre hanging 
up against our walls; but their colours are exquisite and 
unfading ; they have that universal expression which never 
rises higher than the comprehension of the humblest, yet 
is ever on a level with the understanding and appreciation 
of the loftiest ; they possess that familiar sweetness of 
household expression which wins them welcome, alike where 
the rich inhabit and in huts where poor men lie ; and there, 
improving and gladdening all, they are likely to hang for- 
ever. 

FROM IRVING' S LIFE OF THE POET.* 

There are few writers for whom the reader feels such 
personal kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith, for few have so 
eminently possessed the magic gift of identifying themselves 
with their writings. We read his character in every page, 
and grow into familiar intimacy with him as we read. The 
artless benevolence that beams throughout his works; the 
whimsical yet amiable views of human life and human nat- 
ure; the unforced humour, blending so happily with good- 
feeling and good-sense, and singularly dashed at times with 
a pleasing melancholy; even the very nature of his mellow 
and flowing and softly tinted style — all seem to bespeak his 
moral as well as his intellectual qualities, and make us love 
the man at the same time that we admire the author. While 
the productions of writers of loftier pretension and more 
sounding names are suffered to moulder on our shelves, 
those of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. 
We do not quote them with ostentation, but they mingle 

* Oliver Goldsmith : a Biography. By Washington Irving. Edit, of 
1849, p. 17 foil. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



41 



with our minds, sweeten our tempers, and harmonize our 
thoughts; they put us in good-humour with ourselves and 
with the world, and in so doing they make us happier and 
better men. 

An acquaintance with the private biography of Goldsmith 
lets us into the secret of his gifted pages. We there dis- 
cover them to be little more than transcripts of his own 
heart and picturings of his fortunes. There he shows him- 
self the same kind, artless, good-humoured, excursive, sensi- 
ble, whimsical, intelligent being that he appears in his writ- 
ings. Scarcely an adventure or character is given in his 
works that may not be traced to his own parti-coloured story. 
Many of his most ludicrous scenes and ridiculous incidents 
have been drawn from his own blunders and mischances, 
and he seems really to have been buffeted into almost every 
maxim imparted by him for the instruction of his reader. . . . 

Never was the trite, because sage apothegm, that " The 
child is father to the man," more fully verified than in the 
case of Goldsmith. He is shy, awkward, and blundering in 
childhood, yet full of sensibility; he is a butt for the jeers 
and jokes of his companions, but apt to surprise and con- 
found them by sudden and witty repartees; he is dull and 
stupid at his tasks, yet an eager and intelligent devourer of 
the travelling tales and campaigning stories of his half-mil- 
itary pedagogue ; he may be a dunce, but he is already a 
rhymer; and his early scintillations of poetry awaken the 
expectations of his friends. He seems from infancy to have 
been compounded of two natures — one bright, the other blun- 
dering; or to have had fairy gifts laid in his cradle by the 
" good people " who haunted his birthplace, the old goblin 
mansion on the banks of the Inny. 

He carries with him the wayward elfin spirit, if we may 
so term it, throughout his career. His fairy gifts are of no 
avail at school, academy, or college : they unfit him for close 
study and practical science, and render him heedless of 



. 2 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

everything that does not address itself to his poetical im- 
agination and genial and festive feelings; they dispose him 
to break away from restraint, to stroll about hedges, green 
lanes, and haunted streams, to revel with jovial companions, 
or to rove the country like a gypsy in quest of odd advent- 
ures. 

As if confiding in these delusive gifts, he takes no heed 
of the present nor care for the future, lays no regular and 
solid foundation of knowledge, follows out no plan, adopts 
and discards those recommended by his friends; at one time 
prepares for the ministry, next turns to the law, and then 
fixes upon medicine. He repairs to Edinburgh, the great 
emporium of medical science, but the fairy gifts accompany 
him ; he idles and frolics away his time there, imbibing only 
such knowledge as is agreeable to him; makes an excursion 
to the poetical regions of the Highlands; and having walk- 
ed the hospitals for the customary time, sets off to ramble 
over the Continent, in quest of novelty rather than knowl- 
edge. His whole tour is a poetical one. He fancies he is 
playing the philosopher while he is really playing the poet ; 
and though professedly he attends lectures and visits foreign 
universities, so deficient is he on his return, in the studies 
for which he set out, that he fails in an examination as a 
surgeon's mate ; and while figuring as a doctor of medicine, 
is outvied on a point of practice by his apothecary. Baffled 
in every regular pursuit, after trying in vain some of the 
humbler callings of commonplace life, he is driven almost 
by chance to the exercise of his pen, and here the fairy gifts 
come to his assistance. For a long time, however, he seems 
unaware of the magic properties of that pen : he uses it only 
as a makeshift until he can find a legitimate means of sup- 
port. He is not a learned man, and can write but meagrely 
and at second-hand on learned subjects; but he has a quick 
convertible talent that seizes lightly on the points of knowl- 
edge necessary to the illustration of a theme : his writings 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 43 

for a time are desultory, the fruits of what he has seen and 
felt, or what he has recently and hastily read ; but his gifted 
pen transmutes everything into gold, and his own genial nat- 
ure reflects its sunshine through his pages. 

Still unaware of his powers, he throws off his writings 
anonymously, to go with the writings of less favoured men ; 
and it is a long time, and after a bitter struggle with poverty 
and humiliation, before he acquires confidence in his literary 
talent as a means of support, and begins to dream of rep- 
utation. 

From this time his pen is a wand of power in his hand, 
and he has only to use it discreetly to make it competent 
to all his wants. But discretion is not a part of Goldsmith's 
nature; and it seems the property of these fairy gifts to be 
accompanied by moods and temperaments to render their 
effect precarious. The heedlessness of his early days; his 
disposition for social enjoyment; his habit of throwing the 
present on the neck of the future, still continue. His ex- 
penses forerun his means; he incurs debts on the faith of 
what his magic pen is to produce, and then, under the press- 
ure of his debts, sacrifices its productions for prices far be- 
low their value. It is a redeeming circumstance in his prod- 
igality that it is lavished oftener upon others than upon 
himself: he gives without thought or stint, and is the con- 
tinual dupe of his benevolence and his trustfulness in human 
nature. We may say of him as he says of one of his heroes, 
" He could not stifle the natural impulse which he had to do 
good, but frequently borrowed money to relieve the distress- 
ed; and when he knew not conveniently where to borrow, 
he has been observed to shed tears as he passed through the 
wretched suppliants who attended his gate. . . . His simplicity 
in trusting persons whom he had no previous reasons to place 
confidence in seems to be one of those lights of his character 
which, while they impeach his understanding, do honour to 
his benevolence. The low and the timid are ever suspicious; 



44 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

but a heart impressed with honourable sentiments expects 
from others sympathetic sincerity. " # 

His heedlessness in pecuniary matters, which had render- 
ed his life a struggle with poverty even in the days of his 
obscurity, rendered the struggle still more intense when his 
fairy gifts had elevated him into the society of the wealthy 
and luxurious, and imposed on his simple and generous spirit 
fancied obligations to a more ample and bounteous display. 

" How comes it," says a recent and ingenious critic, " that 
in all the miry paths of life which he had trod, no speck ever 
sullied the robe of his modest and graceful muse. How 
amid all that love of inferior company, which never to the 
last forsook him, did he keep his genius so free from every 
touch of vulgarity?" 

We answer that it was owing to the innate purity and 
goodness of his nature ; there was nothing in it that assimi- 
lated to vice and vulgarity. Though his circumstances often 
compelled him to associate with the poor, they never could 
betray him into companionship with the depraved. His rel- 
ish for humour and for the study of character, as we have 
before observed, brought him often into convivial company 
of a vulgar kind; but he discriminated between their vulgar- 
ity and their amusing qualities, or rather wrought from the 
whole those familiar pictures of life which form the staple of 
his most popular writings. 

Much, too, of this intact purity of heart may be ascribed 
to the lessons of his infancy under the paternal roof; to the 
gentle, benevolent, elevated, unworldly maxims of his" father, 
who, " passing rich with forty pounds a year," infused a spirit 
into his child which riches could not deprave nor poverty de- 
grade. Much of his boyhood, too, had been passed in the 
household of his uncle, the amiable and generous Contarine; 
where he talked of literature with the good pastor, and prac- 
ticed music with his daughter, and delighted them both by 
* Goldsmith's Life of Nash. 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 45 

his juvenile attempts at poetry. These early associations 
breathed a grace and refinement into his mind, and tuned it 
up after the rough sports on the green or the frolics at the 
tavern. These led him to turn from the roaring glees of the 
club to listen to the harp of his cousin Jane, and from the 
rustic triumph of " throwing sledge " to a stroll with his flute 
along the pastoral banks of the Inny. 

The gentle spirit of his father walked with him through 
life, a pure and virtuous monitor; and in all the vicissitudes 
of his career, we find him ever more chastened in mind by 
the sweet and holy recollections of the home of his infancy. 

It has been questioned whether he really had any religious 
feeling. Those who raise the question have never consider- 
ed well his writings ; his Vicar of Wakefield and his pictures 
of the village pastor present religion under its most en- 
dearing forms, and with a feeling that could only flow from 
the deep convictions of the heart. When his fair travelling 
companions at Paris urged him to read the Church Service 
on a Sunday, he replied that " he was not worthy to do it." 
He had seen in early life the sacred offices performed by his 
father and his brother, with a solemnity which had sanctified 
them in his memory; how could he presume to undertake 
such functions? His religion has been called in question by 
Johnson and by Boswell : he certainly had not the gloomy 
hypochondriacal piety of the one nor the babbling mouth- 
piety of the other; but the spirit of Christian charity breathed 
forth in his writings and illustrated in his conduct give us 
reason to believe he had the indwelling religion of the 
soul. . . . 

From the general tone of Goldsmith's biography, it is evi- 
dent that his faults, at the worst, were but negative, while 
his merits were great and decided. He was no one's enemy 
but his own; his errors, in the main, inflicted evil on none 
but himself, and were so blended with humorous and even 
affecting circumstances as to disarm anger and conciliate 



4 6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

kindness. Where eminent talent is united to spotless virtue 
we are awed and dazzled into admiration, but our admiration 
is apt to be cold and reverential; while there is something 
in the harmless infirmities of a good and great but erring 
individual that pleads touchingly to our nature; and we 
turn more kindly towards the object of our idolatry when 
we find that, like ourselves, he is mortal and is frail. The 
epithet so often heard, and in such kindly tones, of "poor 
Goldsmith," speaks volumes. Few who consider the real 
compound of admirable and whimsical qualities which form 
his character would wish to prune away its eccentricities, 
trim its grotesque luxuriance, and clip it down to the decent 
formalities of rigid virtue. "Let not his frailties be remem- 
bered," said Johnson; "he was a very great man." But, 
for our part, we rather say " Let them be remembered," since 
their tendency is to endear; and we question whether he 
himself would not feel gratified in hearing his reader, after 
dwelling with admiration on the proofs of his greatness, close 
the volume with the kind-hearted phrase, so fondly and fa- 
miliarly ejaculated, of " Poor Goldsmith!" 



J 



&p\^. ouzos' JZ<V" 4*jtM^ 
Qi^c^l SZjpzsLu*. ty/fb^ fr*07r 



THE TRAVELLER, 



TO THE 

REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH. 

Dear Sir, 

I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire 
no new force from the ceremonies of a dedication ; and per- 
haps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my 
attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a 
part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzer- 
land, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to 
you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when 
the reader understands that it is addressed to a man who, 
despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness 
and obscurity with an income of forty pounds a year. 

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your hum- 
ble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where 
the harvest is great and the labourers are but few; while you 
have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many 
and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds 
of ambition — what from the refinement of the times, from 
differing systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party 
— that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. 

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished 
nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refine- 
ment, painting and music come in for a share. As these 
offer the feeble mind a less laborious entertainment, they at 
first rival poetry, and at length supplant her : they engross 
all that favour once shown to her ; and, though but younger 
sisters, seize upon the elder's birthright. 

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, 
it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the 

D 



5o DEDICATION. 

learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard 
of late in favour of blank verse and pindaric odes, choruses, 
anapests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence ! 
Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he 
is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to 
say — for error is ever talkative. 

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous: I 
mean party. Party entirely distorts the judgment and de- 
stroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this 
disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to in? 
crease the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists 
from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human 
flesh, the reader who has once gratified his appetite with 
calumny makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon 
murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire some 
half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, hav- 
ing lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with 
the name of poet : his tawdry lampoons are called satires ; 
his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire. 

What reception a poem may find which has neither abuse, 
party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell ; nor am I 
solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing 
the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the 
rage of all. I have endeavoured to show that there may be 
equal happiness in states that are differently governed from 
our own ; that every state has a particular principle of hap- 
piness ; and that this principle in each may be carried to a 
mischievous excess. There are few can judge better than 
yourself how far these positions are illustrated in this poem. 
I am, Dear Sir, 

Your most affectionate brother, 

Oliver Goldsmith. 




THE TRAVELLER; 

OR, 

A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY. 



Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow — 
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po, 
Or onward where the rude Carinthian boor 
Against the houseless stranger shuts the door, 
Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies 
A weary waste expanding to the skies — 



52 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 

My heart, untravell'd, fondly turns to thee ; 

Still to my Brother turns, with ceaseless pain, 

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain. 10 

Eternal blessings crown my earliest friend, 
And round his dwelling guardian saints attend: 
Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 
To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire ; 
Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, 
And every stranger finds a ready chair; 
Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd, 
Where all the ruddy family around 
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, 
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale, 20 

Or press the bashful stranger to his food, 
And learn the luxury of doing good. 

But me, not destin'd such delights to share, 
My prime of life in wandering spent and care — 
ImpelPd with steps unceasing to pursue 
Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view, 
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies, 
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies — 
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, 
And find no spot of all the world my own. 30 

Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend, 
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend; 
And placed on high, above the storm's career, 
Look downward where an hundred realms appear — 
Lakes, forests, cities, plains extending wide, 
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride. 

When thus Creation's charms around combine, 
Amidst the store should thankless pride repine ? 
Say, should the philosophic mind disdain 
That good which makes each humbler bosom vain ? 4° 
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can, 



THE TRAVELLER. 



53 



These little things are great to little man ; 

And wiser he whose sympathetic mind 

Exults in all the good of all mankind. 

Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crown'd, 

Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round, 

Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale, 

Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale — 

For me your tributary stores combine; 

Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! 50 




As some lone miser, visiting his store, 
Bends at his treasure, counts, recounts it o'er — 
Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill, 
Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still — 
Thus to my breast alternate passions rise, 
Pleas'd with each good that Heaven to man supplies, 



54 



\ 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall, 

To see the hoard of human bliss so small ; 

And oft I wish, amidst the scene, to find 

Some spot to real happiness consign'd, . 60 

Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest, 

May gather bliss to see my fellows blest. 

But where to find that happiest spot below, 
Who can direct, when all pretend to know ? 
The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone 
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own, 
Extols the treasures of his stormy seas, 
And his long nights of revelry and ease; 
The naked negro, panting at the line, 
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 70 

Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. 
Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam ; 
His first, best country ever is at home. 
And yet, perhaps, if countries we compare, 
And estimate the blessings which they share, 
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find 
An equal portion dealt to all mankind ; 
As different good, by art or nature given, 
To different nations makes their blessings even. 80 

Nature, a mother kind alike to all, 
Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call : 
With food as well the peasant is supplied 
On Idra's cliffs as Arno's shelvy side ; 
And though the rocky crested summits frown, 
These rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down. 
From Art more various are the blessings sent — 
Wealth, commerce, honour, liberty, content; 
Yet these each other's power so strong contest 
That either seems destructive of the rest: 
Where wealth and freedom reign contentment fails, 



THE TRAVELLER. 55 

\ 
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. 

Hence every state, to one lov'd blessing prone, 

Conforms and models life to that alone : 

Each to the favourite happiness attends, 

And spurns the plan that aims at other ends ; 

Till, carried to excess in each domain, 

This favourite good begets peculiar pain. 

But let us try these truths with closer eyes, 
And trace them through the prospect as it lies : 
Here for a while my proper cares resign'd, 
Here let me sit in sorrow for mankind ; 
Like yon neglected shrub, at random cast, 
That shades the steep, and sighs at every blast. 

Far to the right, where Apennine ascends, 
Bright as the summer, Italy extends ; 
Its uplands sloping deck the mountain's side, 
Woods over woods in gay theatric pride, 
While oft some temple's mouldering tops between 
With venerable grandeur mark the scene. 

Could Nature's bounty satisfy the breast, 
The sons of Italy were surely blest. 
Whatever fruits in different climes were found, 
That proudly rise, or humbly court the ground ; 
Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear, 
Whose bright succession decks the varied year; 
Whatever sweets salute the northern sky 
^With vernal lives, that blossom but to die ; 
These, here disporting, own the kindred soil, 
Nor ask luxuriance from the planter's toil ; 
While sea-born gales their gelid wings expand 
To winnow fragrance round the smiling land. 

But small the bliss that sense alone bestows, 
And sensual bliss is all the nation knows; 
In florid beauty groves and fields appear — 
Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. 



56 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




Contrasted faults through all his manners reign : 
Though poor, luxurious ; though submissive, vain ; 
Though grave, yet trifling ; zealous, yet untrue ; 
And even in penance planning sins anew. 
All evils here contaminate the mind, 
That opulence departed leaves behind ; 



130 



THE TRAVELLER. 



57 



a -— klr' 1 ' 11 







For wealth was theirs — not far remov'd the date 
When commerce proudly flourish'd through the state. 
At her command the palace learn'd to rise, 
Again the long-fallen column sought the skies, 
The canvas glow'd beyond even nature warm, 
The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form, 
Till, more unsteady than the southern gale, 
Commerce on other shores display'd her sail ; 
While nought remain'd of all that riches gave, 
But towns unmann'd and lords without a slave : 
And late the nation found, with fruitless skill, 
Its former strength was but plethoric ill. 

Yet still the loss of wealth is here supplied 
By arts, the splendid wrecks of former pride : 
From these the feeble heart and long-fallen mind 



140 



5 8 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

An easy compensation seem to find. 

Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd, 

The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade, 150 

Processions form'd for piety and love, 

A mistress or a saint in every grove. 

By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd ; 

The sports of children satisfy the child. 

Each nobler aim, represt by long control, 

Now sinks at last, or feebly maiis the soul ; 

While low delights, succeeding fast behind, 

In happier meanness occupy the mind : 

As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, 

Defac'd by time and tottering in decay, . 160 

There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 

The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed; 

And, wondering man could want the larger pile, 

Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile. 

My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey 
Where rougher climes a nobler race display, 
Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread, 
And force a churlish soil for scanty bread. 
No product here the barren hills afford 
But man and steel, the soldier and his sword ; 170 

No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array, 
But winter lingering chills the lap of May ; 
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, 
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest 

Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm, 
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm. 
Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small, 
He sees his little lot the lot of all ; 
Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, 
To shame the meanness of his humble shed, 180 

No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal, 
To make him loathe his vegetable meal ; 



THE TRAVELLER. 



59 




But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil, 
Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil. 
Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose, 
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes ; 
With patient angle trolls the finny deep, 
Or drives his venturous ploughshare to the steep ; 
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way, 
And drags the struggling savage into day. 
At night returning, every labour sped, 
He sits him down the monarch of a shed; 
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys 
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze ; 
While his lov'd partner, boastful of her hoard, 
Displays her cleanly platter on the board : 
And haply too some pilgrim, thither led, 
With many a tale repays the nightly bed. 



190 



6o 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




Thus every good his native wilds impart 
Imprints the patriot passion on his heart ; 
And even those ills that round his mansion rise 
Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. 
Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, 
And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms ; 
And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, 
Clings close and closer to the mother's breast, 
So the loud torrent and the whirlwind's roar 
But bind him to his native mountains more. 

Such are the charms to barren states assign'd; 
Their wants but few, their wishes all confin'd. 
Yet let them only share the praises due; 
If few their wants, their pleasures are but few : 
For every want that stimulates the breast 
Becomes a source of pleasure when redrest. 
Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies, 
That first excites desire, and then supplies. 
Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy, 
To fill the languid pause with finer joy; 
Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, 



THE TRAVELLER. 



61 




Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame 

Their level life is but a smouldering fire, 

Unquench'd by want, unfann'd by strong desire ; 

Unfit for raptures, or, if raptures cheer 

On some high festival of once a year, 

In wild excess the vulgar breast takes fire, 

Till, buried in debauch, the bliss expire. 

But not their joys alone thus coarsely flow; 
Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low: 
For, as refinement stops, from sire to son 
Unalter'd, unimprov'd the manners run ; 



230 



52 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

And love's and friendship's finely pointed dart 

Fall blunted from each indurated heart. 

Some sterner virtues o'er the mountain's breast 

May sit, like falcons cowering on the nest ; 

But all the gentler morals, such as play 

Through life's more cultur'd walks, and charm the way, 

These, far dispers'd, on timorous pinions fly, 

To sport and flutter in a kinder sky. 

To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, 
I turn; and France displays her bright domain. 240 

Gay, sprightly land of mirth and social ease, 
Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, 
How often have I led thy sportive choir, 
With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire, 
Where shading elms along the margin grew, 
And, freshen'd from the wave, the zephyr flew! 
And haply, though my harsh touch, faltering still, 
But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill, 
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power, 
And dance, forgetful of the noontide hour. 250 

Alike all ages: dames of ancient days 
Have led their children through the mirthful maze ; 
And the gay grandsire, skilPd in gestic lore, 
Has frisk'd beneath the burthen of threescore. 

So blest a life these thoughtless realms display ; 
Thus idly busy rolls their world away. 
Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear, 
For honour forms the social temper here: 
Honour, that praise which real merit gains, 
Or even imaginary worth obtains, 260 

Here passes current; paid from hand to hand, 
It shifts, in splendid traffic, round the land; 
From courts to camps, to cottages it strays, 
And all are taught an avarice of praise. 
They please, are pleas'd ; they give to get esteem, 
Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem. 



THE TRAVELLER. 



63 



But while this softer art their bliss supplies, 
It gives their follies also room to rise; 
For praise, too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought, / 
Enfeebles all internal strength of thought; 270 

And the weak soul, within itself unblest, 
Leans for all pleasure on another's breast. 
Hence ostentation here, with tawdry art, 
Pants for the vulgar praise which fools impart ; 
Here vanity assumes her pert grimace, 
And trims her robes of frieze with copper lace ; 
Here beggar pride defrauds her daily cheer, 
To boast one splendid banquet once a year: 
The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws, 
Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause. 280 

To men of other minds my fancy flies, 
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. 
Methinks her patient sons before me stand, 
Where the broad ocean leans against the land, 
And, sedulous to stop the coming tide, 
Lift the tall rampire's artificial pride. 
Onward, methinks, and diligently slow, 
The firm, connected bulwark seems to grow, 
Spreads its long arms amid the watery roar, 
Scoops out an empire, and usurps the shore; 2QO 

While the pent ocean, rising o'er the pile, 
Sees an amphibious world beneath him smile— 
The slow canal, the yellow-blossom'd vale, 
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail, 
The crowded mart, the cultivated plain — 
A new creation rescued from his reign. 

Thus, while around the wave-subjected soil 
Impels the native to repeated toil, 
Industrious habits in each bosom reign, 
And industry begets a love of gain. 300 

Hence all the good from opulence that springs, 



6 4 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




With all those ills superfluous treasure brings, 

Are here display'd. Their much-lov'd wealth imparts 

Convenience, plenty, elegance, and arts; 

But view them closer, craft and fraud appear, 

Even liberty itself is barter'd here. 

At gold's superior charms all freedom flies; 

The needy sell it, and the rich man buys: 

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves, 

Here wretches seek dishonourable graves, 

And, calmly bent, to servitude conform, 

Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm. 

Heavens ! how unlike their Belgic sires of old — 
Rough, podV, content, ungovernably bold, 
War in each breast, and freedom on each brow ! 
How much unlike the sons of Britain now ! 



310 



THE TRAVELLER. 

Fir'd at the sound, my genius spreads her wing, 
And flies where Britain courts the western spring ; 
Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride, 
And brighter streams than fam'd Hydaspes glide. 
There, all around, the gentlest breezes stray; 
There gentle music melts on every spray ; 
Creation's mildest charms are there combin'd : 
Extremes are only in the master's mind. 
Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state, 
With daring aims irregularly great. 
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, 
I see the lords of human kind pass by; 
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band, 
By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand, 
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul, 
True to imagin'd right, above control; 



65 



320 



330 




66 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

While even the peasant boasts these rights to scan. 
And learns to venerate himself as man. 

Thine, Freedom, thine the blessings pictur'd here, 
Thine are those charms that dazzle and endear; 
Too blest indeed were such without alloy, 
But, foster'd even by freedom, ills annoy. 
That independence Britons prize too high 
Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie : 340 

The self-dependent lordlings stand alone, 
All claims that bind and sweeten life unknown. 
Here, by the bonds of nature feebly held, 
Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd ; 
Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar, 
Represt ambition struggles round her shore, 
Till, overwrought, the general system feels 
Its motions stop, or frenzy fire the wheels. 

Nor this the worst. As Nature's ties decay, . 
As duty, love, and honour fail to sway, 350 

Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law, 
Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe. 
Hence all obedience bows to these alone, 
And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown; 
Till time may come when, stript of all her charms, 
The land of scholars, and the nurse of arms, 
Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame, 
Where kings have toil'd, and poets wrote for fame, 
One sink of level avarice shall lie, 
And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonour'd die. 360 

Yet think not, thus when Freedom's ills I state, 
I mean to flatter kings or court the great. 
Ye powers of truth, that bid my soul aspire, 
Far from my bosom drive the low desire ! 
And thou, fair Freedom, taught alike to feel 
The rabble's rage and tyrant's angry steel ; 
Thou transitory flower, alike undone 



THE TRAVELLER. 



67 




By proud contempt or favour's fostering sun, 
Still may thy blooms the changeful clime endure ! 
I only would repress them to secure : 
For just experience tells, in every soil, 
That those who think must govern those that toil ; 
And all that Freedom's highest aims can reach 
Is but to lay proportion'd loads on each) 
Hence, should one order disproportion^ grow, 
Its double weight must ruin all below. 

O then how blind to all that truth requires, 
Who think it freedom when a part aspires ! 
Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms, 
Except when fast-approaching danger warms : 
But, when contending chiefs blockade the throne, 



370 



380 



68 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Contracting regal power to stretch their own ; 

When I behold a factious band agree 

-To call it freedom when themselves are free ; 

Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw, 

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law; 

The wealth of climes where savage nations roam 

Pillag'd from slaves to purchase slaves at home; 

Fear, pity, justice, indignation start, 

Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart : 39° 

Till half a patriot, half a coward grown, 

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. 

Yes, Brother, curse with me that baleful hour 

When first ambition struck at regal power; 
And thus, polluting honour in its' source, 

Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. 

Have we not seen, round Britain's peopled shore, 

Her useful sons exchang'd for useless ore ? 

Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, 

Like flaring tapers brightening as they waste ? 400 

Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain, 

Lead stern depopulation in her train, 

And over fields where scatter'd hamlets rose, 

In barren, solitary pomp repose ? 

Have we not seen, at pleasure's lordly call, 

The smiling, long-frequented village fall ? 

Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay'd, 

The modest matron, and the blushing maid, 

Forc'd from their homes, a melancholy train, 

To traverse climes beyond the western main ; 410 

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, 

And Niagara stuns with thundering sound ? 

Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays 
Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways, 
Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 
And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim ; 



THE TRAVELLER. 



6-9 




There, while above the giddy tempest flies, 
And all around distressful yells arise, 
The pensive exile, bending with his woe, 
To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 
Casts a long look where England's glories shine, 
And bids his bosom sympathize with mine. 
( Vain, very vain, my weary search to find 
That bliss which only centres in the mind : 



420 



7o 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose, 
To seek a good each government bestows ? 
In every government, though terrors reign, 
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain, 
How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ! 
Still to ourselves in every place consign 'd, 
Our own felicity we make or find : 
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, 
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. 
The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel, 
Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel, 
To men remote from power but rarely known, 
Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own. 



430 




THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



TO 

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 

Dear Sir, 

I can have no expectations, in an address of this kind, 
either to add to your reputation or to establish my own. 
You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant 
of that art in which you are said to excel ; and I may lose 
much by the - severity of your judgment, as few have a juster 
taste in poetry than you, Setting interest therefore aside, to 
which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at 
present in following my affections. The only dedication 
I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better 
than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to 
inscribe this poem to you. 

How far you may be pleased with the versification and 
mere mechanical parts of this attempt I do not pretend to 
inquire; but I know you will object — and indeed several of 
our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion — that the 
depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the dis- 
orders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own 
imagination. To this I can scarce make any other answer 
than that I sincerely believe what I have written ; that I have 
taken all possible pains, in my country excursions for these 
four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege ; and 
that all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those 
miseries real which I here attempt to display. But this is 
not the place to enter into an inquiry whether the country be 
depopulating or not; the discussion would take up much 
room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent poli- 



74 DEDICA TION. 

tician to tire the reader with a long preface when I want his 
unfatigued attention to a long poem. 

In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh 
against the increase of our luxuries; and here I also expect 
the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or 
thirty years past it has been the fashion to consider luxury 
as one of the greatest national advantages; and all the 
wisdom of antiquity, in that particular, as erroneous. Still, 
however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, 
and continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by 
which so many vices are introduced and so many kingdoms 
have been undone. Indeed, so much has been poured out 
of late on the other side of the question, that merely for the 
sake of novelty and variety one would sometimes wish to 
be in the right. 

I am, Dear Sir, 

Your sincere friend, 

and ardent admirer, 

Oliver Goldsmith. 



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' WEET AUBURN ! loveliest village of the plain, 
Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain, 
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, 
And parting summer's lingering blooms jdelay'd; 
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, 
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, 
How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green, 
Where humble happiness endear'd each scene 
How often have I paus'd on every charm, 
The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, 



7 6 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill, 
The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill, 
The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade, 
For talking age and whispering lovers made ! 
How often have I blest the coming day 
When toil remitting lent its turn to play, 
And all the village train from labour free, 
Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree; 
While many a pastime circled in the shade, 
The young contending as the old survey'd, 20 

And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground, 
And sleights of art and feats of strength went round! 
And still, as each repeated pleasure tir'd, 
Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspir'd ; 
The dancing pair that simply sought renown 
By holding out to tire each other down, 
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face 
While secret laughter titter'd round the place, 
The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love, 
The matron's glance that would those looks reprove. 30 
These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these, 
With sweet succession, taught even toil to please; 
These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed ; 
— Jhese were thy charms — but all these charms are fled. 
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the whole domain, 
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. 40 

No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, 
But chok'd with sedges works its weedy way; 
Along thy glades, a solitary guest, 
The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; 
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



77 



And tires their echoes with unvaried cries; 

Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, 

And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 

And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, 

Far, far away thy children leave the land. « 50 

111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay; 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade — 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made — 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied. 

A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 
When every rood of ground maintain'd its man : 
For him light labour spread her wholesome store, 
Just gave what life requir'd, but gave no more; 60 

His best companions, innocence and health, 
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. 

But times are alter'd ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain : 
Along the lawn where scatter'd hamlets rose, 
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose, 
And every want to opulence allied, 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
Those calm desires that ask'd but little room, 70 

Those healthful sports that grac'd the peaceful scene, 
Liv'd in each look and brighten'd all the green — 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, 
And rural mirth and manners are no more. 

Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. 
Here, as I take my solitary rounds 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin'd grounds, 
And, many a year elaps'd, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 80 



7 8 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Remembrance wakes with all her busy train, 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 

In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given my share — 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose. 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learn'd skill, 9° 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; 
And as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return — and die at home at last. 

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline, 
Retreats from care, that never must be mine ! 
How happy he who crowns, in shades like these, ■ 
A youth of labour with an age of ease ; 100 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
No surly porter stands, in guilty state, 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves, to meet his latter end, 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend, 
Bends to the grave with unperceiv'd decay, 
While resignation gently slopes the way, no 

And, all his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past. 

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There as I pass'd, with careless steps and slow, 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



79 







The mingling notes came soften'd from below : 
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young, 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school, 
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind, 
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind — 
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 
And filPd each pause the nightingale had made. 
But now the sounds of population fail, 
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, 
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, . 
For all the bloomy flush of life is fled — 



8o 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



All but yon widow'd, solitary thing, 

That feebly bends beside the pi ashy spring ; 

She, wretched matron — forc'd in age, for bread, 

To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, 

To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, 

To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn — 

8he only left of all the harmless train, 

The sad historian of the pensive plain ! 



130 




Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd, 
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild, 
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
The village preacher's modest mansion rose. 
A man he was to all the country dear, 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year. 
Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
Nor e'er had chang'd, nor wish'd to change, his place; 
Unpractis'd he to fawn, or seek for power 
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour; 
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize, 



140 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 81 

More skill'd to raise the wretched than to rise. 

His house was known to all the vagrant train, 

He chid their wanderings, but reliev'd their pain ; 150 

The long-remember'd beggar was his guest, 

Whose beard descending swept his aged breast; 

The ruin'd spendthrift, now no longer proud, 

Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd ; 

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, 

Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away, 

Wept o'er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done, 

(Shoulder'd his crutch and show'd how fields were won) ' 
Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow, 
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; 160 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan, 
His pity gave ere charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, 
And even his failings lean'd to virtue's side ; 
But in his duty prompt at every call, 
He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all : 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies, 
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, 
Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. 170 

Beside the bed where parting life was laid, 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismay'd, 
The reverend champion stood : at his control 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, 
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise. 
At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn'd the venerable place ; 
Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway, 

(And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray. J 180 

The service past, around the pious man, 
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 

F 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




Even children follow'd, with endearing wile, 
And pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile : 
His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest, 
Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares distrest. 
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 
\ But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven: 
\As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 



190 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 83 

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossom 'd furze unprofitably gay, 
There, in his noisy mansion, skilPd to rule, 
The village master taught his little school. 




84 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

A man severe he was, and stern to view; 

I knew him well, and every truant knew : 

Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace 

The day's disasters in his morning face; 200 

Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee 

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; 

Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 

Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. 

Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 

The love he bore to learning was in fault. 

The village all declar'd how much he knew; 

'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too, 

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, 

And even the story ran that he could gauge. 210 

In arguing too, the parson own'd his skill, 

For even though vanquish'd he could argue still ; 

While words of learned length and thundering sound 

Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around ; 

And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

But past is all his fame : the very spot, 
Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot. 
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, 
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, 220 
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspir'd, 
Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retir'd, 
Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound, 
And news much older than their ale went round. 
Imagination fondly stoops to trace 
The parlour splendours of that festive place : 
The whitewash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, 
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door; 
The chest contriv'd a double debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; 230 

The pictures plac'd for ornament and use, 



THE DESER TED VILLA GE. 



85 




The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose ; 
The hearth, except when winter chill'd the day, 
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay, 
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show, 
Rang'd o'er the chimney, glisten'd in a row. 
Vain, transitory splendours ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall ? 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart. 



240 



86 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To sweet oblivion of his daily care; 
No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail; 
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 
Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear; 
The host himself no longer shall be found 
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; 
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest, 
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 

Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, 
These simple blessings of the lowly train ; 
To me more dear, congenial to my heart, 



250 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 87 

One native charm, than all the gloss of art. 

Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, 

The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway; . 

Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, 

Unenvied, unmolested, unconfin'd. 

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, 

With, all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd, 260 

In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, 

The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; 

And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 

The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy. 

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and an happy land. 
Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, 
And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; 270 

Hoards even beyond the miser's wish abound, 
And rich men flock from all the world around ; 
Yet count our gains : this wealth is but a name 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 
Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride 
Takes up a space that many poor supplied — 
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 
The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth 
Has robb'd the neighbouring fields of half their growth • 280 
His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; 
Around the world each needful product flies, 
For all the luxuries the world supplies. 
While thus the land adorn'd for pleasure, all 
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall. 

As some fair female, unadorn'd and plain, 
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, 



88 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 




Slights every borrow'd charm that dress supplies, 

Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes; 

But when those charms are past, for charms are frail, 

When time advances, and when lovers fail, 

She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, 

In all the glaring impotence of dress : 

Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd ; 

\i\ nature's simplest charms at first array 'd, 

But verging to decline, its splendours rise, 

Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise; 

While, scourg'd by famine from the smiling land, 

The mournful peasant leads his humble band; 

And while he sinks, without one arm to save, 

The country blooms — a garden, and a grave. 



290 



300 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



89 



Where then, ah ! where shall poverty reside, 
To scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? 
If to some common's fenceless limits stray'd 
He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, 
Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 
And even the bare-worn common is denied. 

If to the city sped — what waits him there? 
To see profusion that he must not share; 
To see ten thousand baneful arts combin'd 



310 



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liiiiHiill'li" 




9° 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; 

To see those joys the sons of pleasure know, 

Extorted from his fellow-creatures' woe. 

Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, 

There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; 

Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, 

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. 

The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign, 

Here, richly deck'd, admits the gorgeous train; 

Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, 

The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 

Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 

Sure these denote one universal joy ! 

Are these thy serious thoughts ? Ah, turn thine eyes 

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 



320 



ysmny, 



If 




THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 91 

She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, 

Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 

Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 

Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; 330 

Now lost to all— her friends, her virtue fled— 

Near her betrayer's door she lays her head, 

And, pinch'd with cold, and shrinking from the shower, 

With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour 

When idly first, ambitious of the town, 

She left her wheel, and robes of country -brown. 

Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, 
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? 
Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 
At proud men's doors they ask a little bread. 340 

Ah, no ! To distant climes, a dreary scene, 
Where half the convex world intrudes between, 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe. 
Far different there from all that charm'd before, 
The various terrors of that horrid shore : 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 
And fiercely shed intolerable day ; 
Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, 
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling; ^ 35° 

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd, 
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; 
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake; 
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, 
And savage men more murderous still than they; 
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, 
Mingling the ravag'd landscape with the skies. 
Far different these from every former scene ; 
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, 360 

The breezy covert of the warbling grove, 
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love. 



92 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



4M^^\; 




Good Heaven ! what sorrows gloom'd that parting day, 
That call'd them from their native walks awav : 
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 
Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their last, 
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main ; 
And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 
Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep. 
The good old sire the first prepar'd to go 
To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe; 
Eut for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 
He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave. 
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 
The fond companion of his helpless years, 



370 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



93 



Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 

And left a lover's for a father's arms. 

With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 

And blest the cot where every pleasure rose, 380 

And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a tear, 

And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear; 

While her fond husband strove to lend relief 

In all the silent manliness of grief. 

O Luxury ! thou curst by Heaven's decree, 




94 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 



How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee ! 



How do thy potions, with insidious joy, 

Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy ! 

Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, 

Boast of a florid vigour not their own : 390 

At every draught more large and large they grow, 

A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe; 

Till sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound, 

Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 

Even now the devastation is begun, 
And half the business of destruction done ; 
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural Virtues leave the land. 
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail, 
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 400 

Downward they move, a melancholy band, 
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 
Contented Toil and hospitable Care, 
And kind connubial Tenderness, are there; 
And Piety with wishes plac'd above, 
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love. 
And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, 
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade, 
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 410 

Dear, charming nymph, neglected and decried, 
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride, 
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, 
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so, 
Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 
Farewell ! and O where'er thy voice be tried, 
On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side, 
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow, 
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

Still let thy voice, prevailing over time, 
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime ; 
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain; 
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain; 
Teach him, that states of native strength possest, 
Though very poor, may still be very blest ; 
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, 
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away; 
While self-dependent power can time defy, 
As rocks resist the billows and the sky. 



95 



430 




?K.y 



RETALIATION 



G 



RETALIATION 



INCLUDING 



EPITAPHS ON THE MOST DISTINGUISHED WITS OF 
THIS METROPOLIS. 



Of old, when Scarron his companions invited, 
Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united ; 
If our landlord supplies us with beef and with fish, 
Let each guest bring himself— and he brings the best dish : 
Our dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains ; 
Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains ; ~ 
Our Will shall be wild fowl, of excellent flavour, 
And Dick with his pepper shall heighten their savour ; 
Our Cumberland's sweetbread its place shall obtain ; 
And Douglas is pudding, substantial and plain; i< 

Our Garrick's a salad, for in him we see 
Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree ; 
To make out the dinner, full certain I am, 
That Ridge is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb ; 
That Hickey's a capon ; and, by the same rule, 
Magnanimous Goldsmith a gooseberry fool. 
At a dinner so various, at such a repast, 
Who'd not be a glutton, and stick to the last ? 
Here, waiter, more wine ! let me sit while I'm able, 
Till all my companions sink under the table ; * 

Then, with chaos and blunders encircling my head, 
Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead. 



IOO OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Here lies the good dean, reunited to earth, 
Who mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth : 
If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt — 
At least, in six weeks, I could not find 'em out; 
Yet some have declar'd, and it can't be denied 'em, 
That sly-boots was cursedly cunning to hide 'em. 

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much ; 30 

Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind ; 
Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat 
To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote ; 
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 
And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining; 
Though equal to ail things, for all things unfit ; 
Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit, 
/For a patdot-too cbol, for a drudge disobedient, 
/ And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient. 40 

/ In short 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, sir, 
VjTo eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. 

Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint, 
While the owner ne'er knew half the good that was in't : 
The pupil of impulse, it forc'd him along, 
His conduct still right, with his argument wrong ; 
Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam — 
The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home. 
Would you ask for his merits? alas ! he had none; 
What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own. so 

Here lies honest Richard, whose fate I must sigh at; 
Alas, that such frolic should now be so quiet ! 
What spirits were his ! what wit and what whim ! 
Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb; 
Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball ; 
Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all ! 
In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, 



RETALIATION. 101 

That we wished him full ten times a-day at Old Nick; 

But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein, 

As often we wish'd to have Dick back again. 60 

Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, 
The Terence of England, the mender of hearts ; 
A flattering painter, who made it his care 
To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are. 
His gallants are all faultless, his women divine, 
And comedy wonders at being so fine • 
Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out, 
Or rather like tragedy giving a rout. 
His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd 
Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud ; 70 

And coxcombs, alike in their failings alone, 
Adopting his portraits, are pleas'd with their own. 
Say, where has our poet this malady caught ? 
Or wherefore his characters thus without fault ? 
Say, was it that vainly directing his view 
To find out men's virtues, and finding them few, 
Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, 
He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself? 

Here Douglas retires, from his toils to relax, 
The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. So 

Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines, 
Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines ! 
When satire and censure encircled his throne, 
I fear'd for your safety, I fear'd for my own ; 
But now he is gone, and we want a detector, 
Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture, 
Macpherson write bombast, and call it a style, 
Our Townshend make speeches, and I shall compile ; 
New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over, 
No countryman living their tricks to discover; 90 

Detection her taper shall quench to a spark, 
And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark. 



io2 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, 
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man : 
As an actor, confess'd without rival to shine ; 
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line; 
Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, 
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. 
Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread 
And beplaster'd with rouge his own natural red. wo 

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting ; 
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting. 
With no reason on earth to go out of his way, 
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day. 
Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 
If they were not his own by finessing and trick : 
He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, 
For he knew when he pleas'd he could whistle them back. 
Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow'd what came, 
And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; «c 

Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, 
Who pepper'd the highest was surest to please. 
But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, 
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. 
Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, ye Woodfalls so grave, 
What a commerce was yours while you got and you gave, 
How did Grub-street re-echo the shouts that you rais'd, 
While he was be-Roscius'd, and you were beprais'd ! 
But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies, 
To act as an angel, and mix with the skies : 12 

Those poets, who owe their best fame to his skill, 
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will; 
Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love, 
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above. 

Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, 
And slander itself must allow him good-nature ; 
He cherish'd his friend, and he relish'd a bumper; 



RETALIATION. 



103 




Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. 

Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser ? 

I answer, no, no— for he always was wiser. 

Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat? 

His very worst foe can't accuse him of that. 

Perhaps he confided in men as they go, 

And so was too foolishly honest ? Ah, no ! 

Then what was his failing ? come, tell it, and burn ye ! 

He W as— could he help it ?— a special attorney. 

Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, 
He has not left a wiser or better behind : 



130 



104 OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 

His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; 

His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; i 4 o 

Still born to improve us in every part, 

His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 

To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 

When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing; 

When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 

He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff. 

By flattery unspoil'd 



POSTSCRIPT. 

Here Whitefoord reclines, and deny it who can, 
Though he merrily liv'd, he is now a grave man. 
Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun ! 
Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun; 
Whose temper was generous, open, sincere ; # 
A stranger to flattery, a stranger to fear; 
Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will; 
Whose daily bons mots half a column might fill ; 
A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free; 
A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he. 

What pity, alas ! that so liberal a mind 
Should so long be to newspaper essays confin'd; 
Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar, 
Yet content "if the table he set on a roar;" 
Whose talents to fill any station were fit, 
Yet happy if Woodfall confessed him a wit. 

Ye newspaper witlings ! ye pert scribbling folks ! 
Who copied his squibs and re-echo'd his jokes; 
Ye tame imitators, ye servile herd, come, 
Still follow your master, and visit his tomb : 
To deck it bring with you festoons of the vine, 
And copious libations bestow on his shrine; 



POSTSCRIPT. 



"5 



Then strew all around it — you can do no less — 
Cross-readings ; ship-news ; and mistakes of the press. 

Merry Whitefoord, farewell ! for thy sake I admit 
That a Scot may have humour — I had almost said wit : 
This debt to thy memory I cannot refuse, 
" Thou best-humour'd man with the worst-humour'd muse. 




THE CLUB. 



NOTES. 



LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. 

A. S., Anglo-Saxon. 

A. V., the Authorized Version of the Bible. 

Adv. of L., Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 

An. Nat., Goldsmith's Animated Nature. 

Arc. , M ilton' s A rcades. 

C.j Craik's English of Shakespeare (Rolfe's edition). 

C. T., Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 
Cf. {confer), compare. 

D. V., Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 
Foil., following. 

F. Q. , Spewser' s Faerie Queene. 
Fr., French. 

H., Haven's Rhetoric (Harper's edition). 

Hales, Longer English Poems, edited by Rev. J. W. Hales (London). 
P. L., Milton's Paradise Lost. 

Shakes. Gr., Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (the references are to sections, not 
pages). 

Shep. Kal., Spenser's Shepherd' ' s Kalendar. 

Trav., Goldsmith's Traveller. 

V. of W., Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto edition). 

Wh., Whately's Rhetoric (Harper's edition). 

Wore, Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition). 

Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, etc.), need no 
explanation. 



NOTES. 



THE TRAVELLER. 

This poem, as we learn from the Dedication, was begun in Switzerland 
in 1755, but it was not completed until 1764. It was published in De- 
cember of that year, and was the earliest production to which Goldsmith 
prefixed his name.* Johnson introduced it to the good opinion of the 
public by a notice in the Critical Review (December, 1764). The article, 
which is largely made up of quotations from the poem, ends thus : "Such 
is the poem on which we now congratulate the public, as on a production to 
which, since the death of Pope, it will not be easy to find anything equal." 
Its success was immediate ; t four editions being called for within eight 
months, and five more during the author's lifetime, 

" The nominal object of the poem," says Mr. Hales, " is to show that, 
as far as happiness is concerned, one form of government is as good as 
another. This was a favourite paradox with Dr. Johnson. Whether he 
or Goldsmith really believed it, may be reasonably doubted. Of course 
it is true that no political arrangements, however excellent, can secure for 
any individual citizen immunity from misery ; it is true also that different 
political systems may suit different peoples, and, further, that every polit- 
ical system has its special dangers ; and it is true, again, that what con- 
stitution may be adapted for what people is often a question of the pro- 
foundest difficulty ; it is true, lastly, that no civil constitution relieves 
any one enjoying the benefit of it from his own proper duties and re- 

* The title-page of the first edition reads thus : " The Traveller, or a Prospect of So- 
ciety. A Poem. Inscribed to the Rev. Mr. Henry Goldsmith. By Oliver Goldsmith, 
M.B. London : Printed for J. Newbery, in St. Paul's Church-yard, MDCCLXV." 

t The appearance of "The Traveller" at once altered Goldsmith's intellectual stand- 
ing in the estimation of society ; but its effect upon the Club, if we may judge from the 
account given by Hawkins, was almost ludicrous. They were lost in astonishment that 
a "newspaper essayist" and "bookseller's drudge" should have written such a poem. 
On the evening of its announcement to them Goldsmith had gone away early, after " rat- 
tling away as usual," and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity with 
the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good-sense, and the occasional elevation of 
his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic numbers had flowed from a man 
to whom in general, says Johnson, "it was with difficulty they could give a hearing." 
"Well," exclaimed Chamier," I do believe he wrote this poem himself, and, let me tell 
you, that is believing a great deal." — Irving. 



IIO NOTES. 

sponsibilities ; but it is assuredly not true that there is no relation what- 
ever between the government of a country and the happiness of its in- 
habitants. A government can, as it pleases, or according to its enlight- 
enment, make circumstances favourable or unfavourable to individual de- 
velopment and happiness. . . . Fortunately one's enjoyment of the poem 
does not depend on the accuracy of the creed it professes." 

The Dedication. — In the first edition the second paragraph is as 
follows : 

" I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. 
You have entered upon a sacred office, while you have left the field of 
ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carry- 
ing away. But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, 
perhaps that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest. What from 
the increased refinement of the times, from the diversity of judgments 
produced by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent 
divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and happiest efforts 
can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. Though the poet were 
as sure of his aim as the imperial archer of antiquity, who boasted that 
he never missed the heart, yet would many of his shafts now fly at ran- 
dom, for the heart is too often in the wrong place." 

There are a few verbal variations in other parts of the Dedication, but 
none worth mentioning, except, perhaps, one in the last paragraph — " that 
every state has a peculiar principle of happiness ; and that this'principle 
in each, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous 
excess." 

i. Slow. At the first meeting of the Literary Club after the publication 
of the poem, Chamier said to Goldsmith : " What do you mean by the 
last word in the first line of your ' Traveller,' ' remote, unfriended, solita- 
ry, slow V do you mean tardiness of locomotion ?" — " Yes," replied Gold- 
smith, inconsiderately, being probably flurried at the moment. " No, 
sir," interposed his protecting friend, Johnson, " you did not mean tardi- 
ness of locomotion ; you meant that sluggishness of mind which comes 
upon a man in solitude." — " Ah," exclaimed Goldsmith, "that was what 
I meant." Chamier immediately believed that Johnson himself had writ- 
ten the line, and a rumour became prevalent that he was the author of 
many of the finest passages. This was ultimately set at rest by Johnson 
himself, who marked with a pencil all the verses he had contributed, nine in 
number — the 420th, and the last ten lines, except the 435th and the 436th. 

3. Carinthia is a province of Austria, east of the Tyrol. Goldsmith 
visited it in 1755. 

8. UntravelVd. That has not travelled. In "an untravelled path," 
etc., the word is used in its ordinary passive sense. Cf. learned in "a 
learned man," well-behaved (in Othello, iv. 2, we find " How have I been be- 
haved?"), well-spoken ("For Clarence is well-spoken," Richard III. i. 
3), well-read ("a well-read man"), etc. It seems to us that mistaken in 
" You are mistaken," which is condemned by some of the grammar- 
makers, is another example of the same kind. 



THE TRAVELLER. riI 

10. Goldsmith has the same metaphor (H. p. 102) in the Citizen of the 
World, iii. : " The farther I travel, I feel the pain of separation with 
stronger force ; those ties that bind me to my native country and you 
are still unbroken. By every remove I only drag a. greater length of 
chain." Cf. also Cibber, Com. Lover : " When I am with Florimel, it [my 
heart] is still your prisoner, it only drags a longer chain after it." 

13. Cf. D. V. 149-162. 

15. Want and pain. A common form of metonymy. H. p. 78. 

17. Crowned. Cf. Ps. Ixv. 1 1. The 1st ed. reads, " Blest be those 
feasts where mirth and peace abound." 

23. [Of what verb is me the object?] 

26. Cf. " A Letter from a Traveller" in The Bee, no. 1 : " When will 
my restless disposition give me leave to enjoy the present hour ? When 
at Lyons, I thought all happiness lay beyond the Alps ; when in Italy, I 
found myself still in want of something, and expected to leave solitude 
behind me by going into Roumelia ; and now you find me turning back, 
still expecting ease everywhere but where I am." 

27. Like the circle, etc. For the mixture of metaphor and simile, see 
Wh. p. 198. Cf. V. of W. ch. xxix. : " Death, the only friend of the 
wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and 
like his horizon still flies before him." 

32. / sit me down. This reflexive use of sit is not unusual in our old 
writers, and is recognized by Wb. and Wore. Some of the grammars 
give it as an example of false syntax, and would make it "set me down." 
Cf. the French s^asseoir. The use of the personal pronoun for the re- 
flexive is common in Elizabethan and earlier English. Cf. Milton, P. L. 
ix. 1121 : "They sat them down to weep," etc. Hales says : " In these 
and all such phrases the pronoun is the ethic dative, as in ' he plucked 
me ope his doublet,'* etc." 

33. Above the storm's career. Cf. D. V. 190. 

34. An hundred. Cf. D. V. 93 : " an hare." As Hales remarks, our 
present rule that a rather than an is to be used before a word beginning 
with a consonant or a sounded h is of comparatively modern date. In 
A. S. the shortened form does not occur ; in mediaeval writers an is the 
more common form. The distinction between the numeral and the ar- 
ticle was not fairly established before Chaucer's day. He commonly 
uses an before h, as "an hare" {C. T. 686), "an holy man" (Ld. 5637), etc. 
In the A. V. we have "an house" (1 Kings ii. 24, etc.), "an husband" 
{Num. xxx. 6, etc.), but elsewhere " a husband," " an hundred," "an host," 
" an hand," "a harp " (1 Chron. xxv. 3, but " an harp," 1 Sam. xvi. 16), "a 
hammer" (Jer. xx^ii. 29, but " an hammer," Judg. iv. 21), " a high wall," 
"an high hand," etc. Shakespeare's usage is pretty much the same as 
that of our day ; as "a hawk, a horse, or a husband " {Much Ado, iii. 4), 
" a hare " (1 Hen. LV. i. 3), etc. 

38. The first ed. reads as follows : 

* Shakes. J. C. i 2. Here, as in Mer. of Ven. i. 3, ''The skilful shepherd pill'd me 
certain wands," the me is clearly expletive (like the Latin "ethical dative"), but "sit me 
down" seems to us a different construction. Abbott recognizes both in his Shakes. Gr. 
bee §§ 220, 223. 



H2 NOTES. 

"Amidst the store 'twere thankless to repine. 
'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride, 
To spurn the splendid things by Heaven supply' d. 
Let school-taught pride," etc. 

41. School-taught pride. The pride which the Stoic felt in his conquest 
of himself and in his superiority to the casualties of life. 

42. These little things. Those which " make each humbler bosom vain." 
45-49. See lines 34-36. For the figures see H. pp. 153, 156. 

48. Ye bending swains. Stooping to their work. Swain was, as Hales 
remarks, "the poet's word for peasant in the last century." It is by no 
means rare in earlier writers (Shakespeare uses it some twenty^five times), 
but in Goldsmith's day it had to do duty on all occasions. On dress cf. 
Gen. ii. 11. 

50. This is the reading of the 1st and of all the modern editions, but 
some of the earlier ones (the 13th among them) have "Creation's tenant, 
all the world is mine." 

52. Recounts. In its literal sense of "counts again." 

57. Prevails. That is, "will out." Sorrows fall may mean, "fall upon 
or oppress the heart ;" or possibly sorrows = " signs of sorrow, i. e. 
tears," as Hales explains it. 

58. [To see. Would this use of the infinitive be allowable in prose? 
Cf. Shakes. Gr. 356..] The 1st ed. has "sum of human bliss." 

60. Consigned. Assigned, appropriated. 

66. The 1 st ed. reads, " Boldly asserts that country for his own ;" and 
in 68, " And live-long nights," etc. 

69. The line. The equator. 

70. Palmy wine. Liquor made from the sap of the palm. 
73. The 1st ed. has " Nor less the patriot's boast," etc. 
75, foil. The 1st ed. reads thus : 

" And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan, 
Or estimate their bliss on Reason's plan, 
Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend, 
We still shall find uncertainty suspend, 
Find that each good, by Art or Nature given, 
To these or those, but makes the balance even : 
Find that the bliss of all is much the same, 
And patriotic boasting reason's shame." 

Bliss, by the way, is a pet word with Goldsmith. 

77. [What difference in the meaning would will, instead of shall, make?] 
79, 80. The pointing is according to the early editions. The lines are 

often printed thus : 

"As different good, by Art or Nature given 
To different nations, makes their blessings even." 

83. With food, etc. This couplet is not found in the 1st ed. 

84. Idrd's cliffs. Idria is a town among the mountains of Carniola, 
1542 feet above the sea. The neighbourhood is famous for its quicksilver 
mines. 

Arnds shelvy side. That is, its gently sloping side. Cf. Merry Wives, 
iii. 5 : " I had been drowned, but that the shore was shelvy and shallow." 

85. Rocky crested. Virtually one word, and sometimes printed with 



THE TRAVELLER. 



"3 



the hyphen. In the 1st ed. this line reads, "And though rough rocks or 
gloomy summits frown." 

87. Art. Used in its wider sense, in antithesis to " Nature" (81). In 
146 and 304 arts = the fine arts. 

89. Strong. The adjective used adverbially, as often in poetry. 

90. Either. The word properly means only "one of two," but is often 
used carelessly as here, even by good writers. Bacon (quoted by John- 
son) has "either of the three." Cf. I Kings xviii. 27, and neither in Rom. 
viii. 38. See also quotation from Addison below (129). In the present 
passage, as Hales suggests, "perhaps either may be justified by supposing 
the 'blessings' just enumerated to be considered as divided in a twofold 
manner : (i.) the one prevailing; (ii.) the others, which are cast into the 
shade by that prevailing one." 

91. Where wealth, etc. This couplet is not in the 1st ed. 

92. And honour sinks. Wordsworth, in one of his Sonnets, says : 

" Ennobling thoughts depart 
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 
The student's bower for gold." 

98. Peculiar pain. Its proper pain, or that peculiar to itself. Cf. Gray, 
Ode on the Pleasiire arising from Vicissitude : 

" Still where rosy pleasure leads 
See a kindred grief pursue." 

101. My proper cares. My personal cares. 
105. Apemtine. The singular poetically used for the plural. 
108. In gay theatric pride. " The stage often borrows similes and met- 
aphors from nature ; here nature is made indebted to the stage !" 
(Hales). Cf. Virgil, ALn. i. 164 : " Silvis scaena coruscis ;" and ALn. v. 
288 : 

— " quem collibus undique curvis 
Cingebant silvae, mediaque in valle theatri 
Circus erat ;" 

also Seneca, Troades, 1125 : "Crescit more theatri." 
in. Cf. Virgil's panegyric on Italy, Geo. ii. 136-176. 
118. Vernal lives. Short as the spring. 

121. Gelid. Not a common word in English poetry. Thomson {Sum- 
mer) has " gelid founts," and {Autumn) "gelid pores." It is not found in 
Shakes, (though he quotes the Latin "gelidus timor" in 2 Hen. VI. iv. 1, 
and " gelida umbra" in L. L. L. iv. 2), or Milton, or Tennyson. 

122. To winnow fragrance. To waft, or diffuse it. 

123. Sense. The senses. 

124. The 1st and 13th eds. read, "all this nation knows ;" and two 
lines below, " Men seem." 

127. Manners. In the sense of the Latin mores. Cf. Wordsworth, 
Sonnet to Milton : 

"And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power." 

128. For the figure see H. p. 118. 

129. Zealous. In a religious sense. Cf. Addison, Spectator, no. 185 : 
" I would have every zealous man examine his heart thoroughly, and I 

H 



II4 NOTES. 

believe he will often find that what he calls a zeal for his religion is either 
pride, interest, or ill-nature." 

133. Not far removed the date. The 1st and 13th, and some modern 
editions, have " nor far removed." Venice, Florence, Genoa, and Pisa 
attained their commercial prime in the 15th century. 

136. Long-fallen. That is, since the old Roman days. We need not 
give a list of the Italian architects, painters, and sculptors alluded to in 
these lines. 

139. "Two of the main causes, certainly, of the decay of Italian com- 
merce were the discovery of America and that of the sea-route to India" 
(Hales). 

140. The 1 st and 13th eds. read, " Soon Commerce turn'd on other 
shores her sail." The next two lines are not in the 1st ed. 

143. Skill. In the old sense of knowledge. It was also used as a 
verb — know, understand. See 1 Kings v. 6 ; 2 Chron. ii. 7, 8, and xxxiv. 
12. Bacon {Adv. of L. i. 7, 12) translates "Sullam nescisse litteras" by 
" Sylla could not skill of letters." 

144. Cf. D. V. 389-394; also Cit. of World, i. : "In short, the state re- 
sembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is only a 
symptom of its wretchedness ; their former opulence only rendered them 
more impotent." 

145. The 1 st ed. reads as follows : 

"Yet though to fortune lost, here still abide 
Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride ; 
From which the feeble heart," etc. 

150. Cf. Pres. State of Learning: "Where, in the midst of porticos, 
processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn shepherds ; and shepherdesses, 
without sheep, indulge their innocent divertimenti." 

153. Irving (p. 160) says : "We hear much about 'poetic inspiration,' 
and the ' poet's eye in a fine phrensy rolling ;' but Sir Joshua Reynolds 
gives an anecdote of Goldsmith while engaged upon his poem, calculated 
to cure our notions about the ardour of composition. Calling upon the 
poet one day, he opened the door without ceremony, and found him in 
the double occupation of turning a couplet and teaching a pet dog to sit 
upon his haunches. At one time he would glance his eye at his desk, 
and at another shake his finger at the dog to make him retain his posi- 
tion. The last lines on the page were still wet ; they form part of the 
description of Italy : 

' By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, 
The sports of children satisfy the child.' 

Goldsmith, with his usual good-humour, joined in the laugh caused by 
his whimsical employment, and acknowledged that his boyish sport with 
the dog suggested the stanza." 
After the 154th line, the 1st ed. reads, 

" At sports like these, while foreign arms advance, 
In passive ease they leave the world to chance. 
When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul, 
She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul ;" 



THE TRAVELLER. 



115 




The 13th ed. reads thus : 

" At Sports like these when foreign Arms advance, 
In passive Ease they leave the World to Chance. 
When noble Aims have suffer' d long Controul, 
They sink at last, or feebly man the Soul, 
When low Delights," etc. 

156. Feebly mans the soul. The metaphor of a vessel is continued in 
this expression. . . , u 1 

159. Domes. In its familiar poetic sense (its original one, by the way, 
from Latin domus) of house, mansion, palace, etc. Cf. D. V. 319. 

167. Bleak. Transferred, by metonymy, from the country to its inhabit- 
ants. The word (akin to bleach) originally meant pale, and was applied 
to persons. Mansions is the original reading, though mansion (which is 
Masson's reading in the Globe ed.) would be better— in its literal sense 
(Latin manere) of an abiding-place. 

In this description of Switzerland it will be observed that there is no 
appreciation of the wild beauty and grandeur of the scenery which attract 
the throngs of tourists in our day. Cf. Macaulay, Hist, of Eng. chap. 13 : 
" Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxons who, more than a century 
ago, ventured to explore the Highlands. He was disgusted by the hide- 
ous wilderness, and declared that he greatly preferred the charming coun- 
try round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant meadow, and the villas 
with their statues and grottoes, trim flower-beds and rectilinear avenues. 
Yet it is difficult to believe that the author of The Traveller and The De- 
serted Village was naturally inferior in taste and sensibility to the thou- 



n6 NOTES. 

sands of clerks and milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the 
sight of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond." 

Cf. also what Ruskin {Modern Painters, vol. iii.) says of the Greeks — 
their " fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced, and rugged ;" that 
" every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a 
fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove ;" and again of " the mediaeval 
mind as agreeing wholly with the ancients, in holding that flat land, 
brooks, and groves of aspens compose the pleasant places of the earth, 
and that rocks and mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be rep- 
robated and detested." Of the Divina Commedia he says: "In no 
part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a 
stern light ; nor the slightest evidence that Dante cared to look at them. 
From that hill of San Miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye 
commands, at the farther extremity of the Val d'Arno, the whole purple 
range of the mountains of Carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always 
against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the 
scene as twilight fades away. By this vision Dante seems to have 
been wholly unmoved, and, but for Lucan's 'mention of Aruns at Luna, 
would seemingly not have spoken of the Carrara hills in the whole course 
of his poem : when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white 
marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard 
for the hills themselves." 

1 68. The line forcibly expresses the labour required to wring, as it 
were, from the soil its scanty produce. 

169, 170. One might infer at first that the poet meant that Switzerland 
furnished iron as well as mercenary soldiers ; but there are no iron mines 
in the country. It had furnished the soldiers from the 15th century. Cf. 
Hamlet, iv. 5 : " Where are my Switzers ?" 

176. Redress the clime. Make amends for it. Cf. 214, where redrest 
means relieved, or supplied. It originally meant to put in order again, 
to set right. Cf. Milton, P. L. ix. 219 : 

"While I, 
In yonder spring of roses intermixt 
With myrtle, find what to redress till noon." 

178. He sees, etc. Cf. Caesar, B. G. vi. : "Cum suas quisque opes cum 
potentissimis aequari videat." 

186. Breasts. This is the reading of all the early editions, and John- 
son quotes it in his Diet, as an illustration of the verb. The reading 
" Breathes," found in the Globe ed. and some others, doubtless had its 
origin in a misprint. 

187. The finny deep. Cf. Cit. of World, ii. : " The best manner to draw 
up the finny prey." On the transfer of the adjective, cf. 167, and D. V. 
361 : " the warbling grove." In " patient angle " and " venturous plough- 
share" we have a similar figure. 

190. Savage. Rarely used as a noun except of human beings. Pope 
{Iliad, xviii. 373) applies it to a lion : 

" When the grim savage, to his rifled den 
Too late returning, snuffs the track of men." 



THE TRAVELLER. 



117 



Goldsmith uses it in the same sense in prose, as in Git. of World, i. : "drive 
the reluctant savage into the toils." 

191. Sped. Accomplished. The verb speed, in this sense, means sim- 
ply to carry through successfully, with no special reference to quickness. 
Cf. Judges v. 30. The noun speed in "I wish you good speed" (of which 
" God speed" is probably a corruption) is similarly used — success. Cf. 
Gen. xxiv. 12 with 2 John 10, 1 1. 

197. Cf. D. V. 155-160. Nightly — for the night ; not, as usual, for a suc- 
cession of nights. Cf. Milton, // Pens. 84 : " To bless the doors from 
nightly harm ;" Arc. 48, etc. So often in Shakes. 

201. The 13th ed. has "And even those Hills." 

203. Conforms. Suits itself. 

205. And as a child. The 1st and 13th eds. have "as a babe." 

206. Close and closer. " Perhaps = closer and closer ; but the former 
comparative inflection is omitted for euphony's and the metre's sake, just 
as one adverbial inflection is omitted in ' safe and nicely,' Lear, v. 3 " 
(Hales). Cf. the omission of the superlative inflection in "the generous 
and gravest citizens" {M.for M. iv. 6), "the soft and sweetest music" 
(Ben Jonson), "only the grave and wisest of the land" (Heywood), etc. 
See Shakes. Gr. 397, 398. 

213. The 1st ed. has "Since every want." Cf. An. Nat. ii. : "Every 
want becomes a means of pleasure in the redressing." 
216. Supplies. Satisfies. 
219, 220. [Is there a confusion of metaphors here ?] 

221. Level. Unvaried, monotonous. Cf. 359. Mrs. Browning, in one 
of her Sonnets, says : " We miss far prospects by a level bliss." 

222. The 1st and 13th eds. read, "Nor quench'd by want, nor fan'd [sic] 
by strong desire." 

226. [How is the form expire to be justified ?] 

232. Fall is not grammatically correct, but may be explained as an in- 
stance of " construction according to sense." 

233. A good example of the mixture of metaphor and simile. Wh. p. 
198. 

234. Cowering. Simply, brooding, with no notion of fear. Cf. Dryden: 
" Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire." The verb was also used 
transitively, as in Spenser, F. Q. ii. 8, 9 : 

" He much rejoyst, and courd it tenderly, 
As chicken newly hatcht, from dreaded destiny ;" 
• 
that is, shielded or protected it, as a bird does its young. 

243. Cf. the narrative of the " philosophic vagabond " in the Vicar of 
Wakefield: "I had some knowledge of music, with a tolerable voice; I 
now turned what was once my amusement into a present means of sub- 
sistence. I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among 
such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry, for I ever 
found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I ap- 
proached a peasant's house towards nightfall, I played one of my merri- 
est tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for 
the next day ; but in truth I must own, whenever I attempted to enter- 



Il8 NOTES. 

tain persons of a higher rank, they always thought my performance odi- 
ous, and never made me any return for my endeavours to please them." 

244. Tuneless. Explained by 247, 248 below. 

253. Gestic lore. Some explain this as " legendary lore." See Wb. s. v. 
But it seems more natural to refer it to his skill in dancing. Cf. Scott, 
Peveril of the Peak, ch. xxx. : " He seemed, like herself, carried away by 
the enthusiasm of the gestic art." 

255. The 13th ed. has " So bright a Life." 

256. Idly busy. The rhetorical figure called " oxymoron." Cf. Horace's 
" Strenua nos exercet inertia," and Pope's {Elegy on an Unfortunate 
Lady) 

"Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er." 

Rolls their world away. Cf. Hamlet, iii. 2 : " Thus runs the world away." 

264. An avarice of praise. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 324 : " Praeter lau- 
dem nullius avaris." 

265, 266. See p. 38, foot-note. 

273. Tawdry. Said to be derived from St. Audrey (St. Ethelreda), at 
the fairs held on whose days toys and finery, especially laces, were sold. 
Originally the word had no depreciatory sense. Cf. Shakes. W. T. iv. 3 : 
"Come, you promised me a tawdry lace and a pair of sweet gloves;" 
and Spenser, Shep. Kal. Apr. : 

" Binde your fillets faste, 
And gird in your waste, 
For more finenesse, with a tawdrie lace." 

The word was also used as a noun, meaning a rustic necklace. Cf. 
Drayton, Polyolbion, ii. : 

"Of which the Naiads and the blue Nereids make 
Them taudries for their necks." 

276. Frieze. A coarse woollen cloth. Cf. Milton, Comus, 722 : "Drink 
the clear stream, and nothing wear but frieze." 

277. Cheer. Fare. For the successive meanings of this word, which 
originally meant the face (Fr. chere), see Wb. or C. p. 278. 

280. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 255 : 

" One self-approving hour whole years outweighs 
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas." 

281. Cf. what Goldsmith says of Holland in one of his letters : " Noth- 
ing can equal its beauty ; wherever I turn my eyes, fine houses, elegant 
gardens, statues, grottoes, vistas, present themselves ; but when you en- 
ter their towns you are charmed beyond description. No misery is to 
be seen here ; every one is usefully employed." 

283. Methinks. In this word me is the dative and thinks (the A. S. 
thincan, to seem, not thencan, to think) is impersonal. In Chaucer we 
find him thoughte, hem (them) thoughte, etc.; also, it thinketh me, etc. 

284. Leans against the land. Cf. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis, st. 164 : 

"And view the ocean leaning on the sky ;" 
also Statius, Theb. iv. 62 : " Et terris maria inclinata repellit." 



THE TRAVELLER. 1Z g 

286. Rampire. The same word as rampart. It was also used as a 
verb. Cf. Shakes. T. of A. v. 5 : "Our rampired gates." The 13th ed. 
has " Rampart's " here, and two lines below both the 1st and 13th have 
" seems to go." 

289. Spreads its long arms, etc. In the 1st ed. this couplet begins, 
" That spreads its arms," and follows 286, which ends with a comma. 
287 and 288 follow 290, and 291 reads, " While ocean pent and rising o'er 
the pile." 

291. In the Animated Nature, Goldsmith says : " The whole kingdom of 
Holland seems to be a conquest on the sea, and in a manner rescued 
from its bosom. The surface of the earth in this country is below the 
level of the bed of the sea ; and I remember upon approaching the coast 
to have looked down upon it from the sea as into a valley." 

297. Wave-subjected. Lying below the level of the waves ; or, perhaps, 
as some explain it, " exposed to the inroads of the waves." 

303. Are. The plural is grammatically incorrect ; but see on 232. 

305. Cf. V.ofW. ch. xix. : " Now the possessor of accumulated wealth, 
when furnished with the necessaries and pleasures of life, has no other 
method to employ the superfluity of his fortune but in purchasing power ; 
that is, differently speaking, in making dependants, by purchasing the lib- 
erty of the needy or the venal, of men who are willing to bear the mortifi- 
cation of contiguous tyranny for bread." 

309. This line occurs verbatim in the Citizen of the World, i. : " A na- 
tion once famous for setting the world an example of freedom is now be- 
come a land of tyrants and a den of slaves." 

311. Calmly bent. Tamely stooping to the yoke. 

312. The 1st and 13th eds. read, "Dull as their lakes that sleep be- 
neath the storm." 

313. In an Introduction to the Hist, of the Seven Years' War, Goldsmith 
says : " How unlike the brave peasants, their ancestors, who spread ter- 
ror in India, and always declared themselves the allies of those who drew 
the sword in defence of freedom !" 

316. "In the 16th century they had fought stoutly against the same 
domineering enemy as England had withstood ; in the 1 7th they had con- 
tested with England the queenship of the seas" (Hales). 

319. Lawns. Cf. D. V. 35. "Arcadia, perhaps most noted in the 
Greek and Latin writers for the stupidity of its inhabitants, was about the 
time of the revival of learning adopted as the ideal of rural beauty " 
(Hales). Arcadici sensus, Arcadicae aures, etc., were proverbial synonyms 
for "pastoral dulness," and Arcadicus juvenis in Juvenal (vii. 160) is 
equivalent to blockhead ; but see Virgil, Ed. vii. 4 ; x. 30. 

320. Hydaspes. One of the tributaries of the Indus, now known as the 
Jelum, or Jhelum. Its Sanscrit name was Vitasta, of which Hydaspes is 
a corruption. Horace (Od. i. 22, 8) calls it " fabulosus," from the mar- 
vellous tales connected with it. 

324. That is, the extremes of climate are known there only in imagina- 
tion. 

327. Port. Cf. Gray's Bard, 117 : " Her lion port, her awe-command- 
ing face." 



I20 NOTES. 

328. In the 1st ed. this line precedes 327. 

330. Cf. Tennyson, Locksley Hall: " Cursed be the sickly forms that 
err from honest nature's rule !" 

332. Imagined right. What he believes to be his right. 

333. Boasts these rights to scan. " Boasts that he scans these rights, 
that he takes his part in the discussion of public questions " (Hales). 

341. This line and the next are not in the 1st ed. In 342 the 13th ed. 
has " All kindred Claims that soften Life unknown." In the 1st ed. 343 
reads, " See, though by circling deeps together held." In 350 both eds. 
have " As social bonds decay." 

345. Ferments. Political agitations. Imprisoned ' = "restrained with- 
in the bounds of law." 

351. Fictitious. Factitious, artificial. 

357. Stems. Families. The 13th ed. has "patriot claim;" and in both 
the 1st and 13th the next line reads, " And monarchs toil, and poets pant 
for fame." 

358. Wrote. For written. Cf. Lear, i. 2 : "he hath wrote this ;" Cymb. 
hi. 5 : " Lucius hath wrote already to the emperor ;" A. and C. iii. 5 : 
" letters he had formerly wrote ;" but writ is the usual form of the parti- 
ciple in Shakes. The latter is the curtailed form of written, and these cur- 
tailed forms {spoke, broke, forgot, chid, froze, etc.) are common in the Eliza- 
bethan writers. See Shakes. Gr. 343. 

362. The great. " This was a very favorite phrase about Goldsmith's 
time " (Hales). After this line the 1st ed. has the couplet, 

" Perish the wish ; for inly satisfied, 
Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride." 

Lines 363-380 are not in 1st ed. 

363. Ye powers, etc. Cf. Pope, Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady : 

" Why bade ye else, ye powers, her soul aspire 
Beyond the vulgar flights of low desire?" 

365. " The literature of the last century abounds with apostrophes to 
Liberty. That theme was the great commonplace of the time. Gold- 
smith has his laugh at it in the Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xix." (Hales). 
369. Blooms. Cf. 115. 
372. Cf. Thomson, Summer : 

" While thus laborious crowds 
Ply the tough oar. philosophy directs 
The ruling helm." 

The 13th ed. reads, " That those who think most, govern those that Toil." 
374. The 13th ed. reads, 

" proportion' d Loads on each ; 
Much on the Low, the Rest, as Rank supplies, 
Should in columnar Diminution rise ; 
While, should one Order," etc. 

We have found this couplet (" Much on," etc.) nowhere else, and it is 
mentioned by none of the editors. 

378. Who think. That is, are they who think. 

380. Warms. That is, " my soul." 

382. Contracting regal power. In the preface to the Hist, of England, 



THE TRAVELLER. 121 

Goldsmith says : " It is not yet decided in politics whether the diminution 
of kingly power in England tends to increase the happiness or freedom 
of the people. For my own part, from seeing the bad effects of the tyr- 
anny of the great in those republican states that pretend to be free, I can- 
not help wishing that our monarchs may still be allowed to enjoy the 
power of controlling the encroachments of the great at home." Cf. V. of 
W. ch. xix. : " It is the interest of the great to diminish kingly power as 
much as possible." . 

386. The 13th and some other eds. read, " Law grinds the poor. Ct. 
V. of W. ch. xix. : " What they may then expect may be seen by turning 
our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, 
and the rich govern the law." _ 

301. Cf. the conclusion of the vicar's harangue, V. of W. ch. xix. 

391. Petty tyrants. Cf. Pope, E$. to Mrs. Blount: " Marriage may all 
these petty tyrants chase." 

396. Gave zuealth, etc. Gave to wealth the power of swaying, etc. 

397, foil. Cf. D. V. 49-56, 63-66, 275-282, 362-384. ^ r ^ i J 

411. Oswego. The river of that name in New York. Cf. Goldsmiths 
Threnodia Augustalis : 

"Oswego's dreary shores shall be my grave." 

412. Niagara. The acce^ was originally on the penult, as here. See 
Lippincotf s Gazetteer. 

414,415. Cf. D. V., 349-355- See also Animated Nature: "Where 
man in his savage state owns inferior strength, and the beasts claim di- 
vided dominion." 

416. The 1st and 13th eds. have "And the brown Indian takes a dead- 
ly aim." 

420. This line was written by Dr. Johnson. See above, on I. 

421. The 1st and 13th eds. read " Casts a fond look." 
426. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man : 

" For forms of government let fools contest ; 
What e'er is best administer' d is best." 

431. Cf. Milton, P. L. i. 254 : 

"The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

435. Cf. Blackmore, Eliza : " Some the sharp axe, and some the pain- 
ful wheel." 

436. Luke's iron crown. George and Luke Dosa were two brothers who 
headed a revolt against the Hungarian nobles in 15 14 ; and George, not 
Luke, underwent the torture of the red-hot iron crown as a punishment 
for allowing himself to be proclaimed King of Hungary by the rebels. 
The brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania, called 
Szeklers (properly Szekelys) or "Zecklers." Boswell {Life of Johnson, 
ch. xix) gives "Zeck" as the name of the brothers, and Corney in his 
edition of Goldsmith "corrects" the text here into " Zec^s iron crown. ' 

Robert Francois Damiens was put to death with frightful tortures in 
1757 for an attempt to assassinate Louis XV. of France. 



I22 NOTES. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 

This poem was first published in 1770. "This day at 12," said the 
Public Advertiser of May 26th of that year, " will be published, price two 
shillings, the Deserted Village, a Poem. By Doctor Goldsmith. Printed 
for W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head in Catherine Street, Strand." A 2d 
edition appeared June 7th ; a 3d, June 14th ; a 4th, carefully revised, 
June 28 ; and a 5th, August 16th. 

The poet Gray, then passing the last summer of his life at Malvern, 
after hearing the poem read to him by his friend Nicholls, exclaimed, 
" This man is a poet." 

Soon after the publication of the poem, the following verses were ad- 
dressed to the author by Miss Aiken, afterwards Mrs. Barbauld : 

" In vain fair Auburn weeps her de^H: plains ; 
She moves our envy who so well complains : 
In vain hath proud oppression laid her low ; 
She wears a garland on her faded brow. 
Now, Auburn, now, absolve impartial Fate, 
Which, if it makes thee wretched, makes thee great. 
So unobserved, some humble plant may bloom, 
Till crush' d, it fills the air with sweet perfume : 
So had thy swains in ease and plenty slept, 
The Poet had not sung, nor Britain wept. 
Nor let Britannia mourn her drooping bay, 
Unhonour'd Genius, and her swift decay: 
O Patron of the Poor ! it cannot be, 
While one — one poet yet remains like thee. 
Nor can the Muse desert our favour' d isle, 
Till thou desert the Muse, and scorn her smile." 

Sir Walter Scott, in the Quarterly Review, vol. iv., thus writes : 

"It would be difficult to point out one among the English poets less 
likely to be excelled in his own style than the author of the Deserted Vil- 
lage. Possessing much of Pope's versification without the monotonous 
structure of his lines ; rising sometimes to the swell and fulness of Dry- 
den, without his inflations ; delicate and masterly in his descriptions ; 
graceful in one of the greatest graces of poetry, its transitions ; alike suc- 
cessful in his sportive or grave, his playful or melancholy mood ; he may 
long bid defiance to the numerous competitors whom the friendship or 
flattery of the present age is so hastily arraying against him." 

And, again : 

" The wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied : he wrote to exalt virtue and 
expose vice ; and he accomplished his task in a manner which raises him 
to the highest rank among British authors. We close this volume with 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 123 

a sigh that such an author should have written so little from the stores 
of his own genius, and that he should have been so prematurely removed 
from the sphere of literature which he so highly adorned." 
Goethe, in his Memoirs, refers to the poem as follows : 
" A poetical production, which our little circle hailed with transport, 
now occupied our attention ; this was Goldsmith's Deserted Village. This 
poem seemed perfectly adapted to the sentiments which then actuated 
us. The pictures which it represented were those which we loved to 
contemplate, and sought with avidity, in order to enjoy them with all the 
zest of youth. Village fetes, wakes, and fairs, the grave meetings of the 
elders under the village trees, to which they have retreated in order to 
leave the young to the pleasures of the dance ; the part taken by persons 
of a more elevated rank in these village entertainments ; the decency 
maintained in the midst of the general hilarity by a worthy clergyman, 
skilled to moderate mirth when approaching to boisterousness, and to 
prevent all that might produce discord ; — such were the representations 
the poet laid before us, not as the object of present attention and enjoy- 
ment, but as past pleasures, the loss of which excited regret. We found 
ourselves once more in our beloved Wakefield, amidst its well-known 
circle. But those interesting characters had now lost all life and move- 
ment ; they appeared only like shadows called up by the plaintive tones 
of the elegiac muse. The idea of this poem seems singularly happy to 
those who can enter into the author's intention, and who, like him, find a 
melancholy satisfaction in recalling innocent pleasures long since fled. I 
shared all Cotter's enthusiasm for this charming production. We both 
undertook to translate it ; but he succeeded better than I did, because I 
had too scrupulously endeavoured to transfer the tender and affecting 
character of the original into our language." _ 

Irving says : " We shall not dwell upon the peculiar merits of this 
poem ; we cannot help noticing, however, how truly it is a mirror of the 
author's heart, and of all the fond pictures of early friends and early life 
forever present there. It seems to us as if the very last accounts received 
from home, of his ' shattered family,' and the desolation that seemed to 
have settled upon the haunts of his childhood, had cut to the roots one 
feebly cherished hope, and produced the following exquisitely tender and 
mournful lines : 

' In all my wanderings round this world of care, 
In all my griefs— and God has given my share— 
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, 
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose ; 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learn' d skill, 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; 
And as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
Here to return— and die at home at last. 

" How touchingly expressive are the succeeding lines, wrung from a 



124 



NOTES. 



heart which all the trials and temptations and buffetings of the world 
could not render worldly ; which, amid a thousand follies and errors of 
the head, still retained its childlike innocence ; and which, doomed to 
struggle on to the last amidst the din and turmoil of the metropolis, had 
ever been cheating itself with a dream of rural quiet and seclusion : 

'O blest retirement, friend to life's decline, 
Retreats from care, that never must be miTie ! 
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, 
A youth of labour with an age of ease ; 
Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since ' tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
No surly porter stands, in guilty state, 
To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves, to meet his latter end, 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend; 
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay, 
While resignation gently slopes the way ; 
And, all his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past.' " 

Mr. Hales remarks : " Goldsmith's was the one poetical voice of that 
time. No other poems besides his, published between Gray's Odes and 
Cowper's Table Talk, can be said to have lived. It is no wonder The 
Deserted Village was so widely popular. The heart of the people was 
not dead, though somewhat chill and cold. It warmed towards a pres- 
ence so genial, so graceful, so tender. 

" Here, as in his other poem, Goldsmith entertained not only an artistic, 
but also a didactic purpose. He wished to set forth the evils of the Lux- 
ury that was prevailing more and more widely in his day. This is a 
thrice old theme ; but indeed what theme is not so ? No doubt the vast 
growth of our commerce and increase of wealth in the middle and latter 
part of the last century especially suggested it in Goldsmith's time. 
Possibly enough in handling it Goldsmith made some blunders ; the work 
could scarcely be his, if it were free from blunders. . . . He was wrong in 
nis belief that England was at the time rapidly depopulating. . . . He was 
obviously wrong in ascribing this supposed depopulation to the great 
commercial prosperity of the time. Whatever sentimental, whatever real 
objections may be urged against Trade, it cannot be denied that it mul- 
tiplies aad widens fields of labour, and so creates populations. . . . Gold- 
smith's fallacy lies in identifying Trade and Luxury. . . . Again, the pict- 
ure drawn of the emigrants in their new land is certainly much exagger- 
ated. Such experience as befalls the hero of Martin Chuzzlewit is very 
much what Goldsmith conceives to await all emigrants. . . . 

" But he is not always in the wrong. His attacks on Luxury, when 
he really means Luxury and not something else in some way associated 
with that cardinal pest, are well deserved and often vigorously made. 
And when he deplores the accumulation of land under one ownership — 
how 'one only master grasps the whole domain' — and how consequently 
the old race of small proprietors is exterminated — how 'a bold peasantry, 
their country's pride,' is perishing, he certainly cannot be laughed down 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 125 

as a maintainer of mere idle grievances. One may agree with him in his 
view in this matter, or one may disagree ; but it cannot be denied that 
here he has a right to his view— that this is a question open to serious 
doubt and difficulty. I suppose there are few persons who will not al- 
low there is something to regret in the almost total disappearance of the 
class of small freeholders, however much that something may seem to be 

compensated for by what has come in their place As the question is 

generally discussed by political economists, it lies between small farms 
and laro-e farms ; ... as it presented itself to Goldsmith, it lay between 
small farms and large parks— between a system of small ground-plots as- 
siduously cultivated, and wide estates reserved for seclusion and pleasure. 
. ' Half a tillage,' as it seemed, ' stinted the smiling plain ; and in his 
eyes there was no smile possible for the plain like that of the waving corn, 
which is, as it were, the gold-haired child of it. Then, like the gentle 
recluse Gray, and like the bright day-labourer Burns, he felt much sym- 
pathy with the merriments and sadnesses and interests of the common 
country-folk. Their life was precious to him, and he could not bear to 
think that the area of it was being narrowed, that for them no more the 
blazing hearth should burn where it had been wont, not because they 
were dead, but because they were ejected wanderers. 

" It is from this sincere sympathy, apart from all theories and theonzmgs, 
that the force and beauty of this poem spring. When Goldsmith thinks 
of the decay or destruction of those scenes he prized so highly, a genuine 
sorrow penetrates him, and he gives it tongue as in this poem ; he be- 
comes the loving elegist of the old yeomanry." 

Mr. Forster, in his Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, comparing 
The Traveller and The Deserted Village, says : " All the characteristics 
of the first poem seem to me developed in the second ; with as chaste a 
simplicity, with as choice a selectness of natural expression, in verse of as 
musical cadence ; but with yet greater earnestness of purpose, and a far 
more human interest. Nor is that purpose to be lightly dismissed, be- 
cause it more concerns the heart than the understanding, and is senti- 
mental rather than philosophical. The accumulation of wealth has not 
brought about man's diminution, nor is trade's proud empire threatened 
with decay ; but too eager are the triumphs of both, to be always con- 
scious of evils attendant on even the benefits they bring,— and of those 
it was the poet's purpose to remind us. The lesson can never be thrown 
away. No material prosperity can be so great, but that underneath it, 
and indeed because of it, will not still be found much suffering and sad- 
ness ; much to remember that is commonly forgotten, much to attend to 
that is almost always neglected. Trade would not thrive the less, though 
shortened somewhat of its unfeeling train ; nor wealth enjoy fewer bless- 
ings, if its unwieldy pomp less often spurned the cottage from the green. 
* It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country,' said the Lord 
Leicester who built Holkham, when complimented on the completion of 
that princely dwelling. ' I look round— not a house is to be seen but 
mine. I am the giant of Giant-castle, and have eat up all my neighbours. * 

* When asked who was his nearest neighbour, he replied, "The King of Denmark.'' 



I2 6 NOTES. 

There is no man who has risen upward in the world, even by ways the 
most honourable to himself and kindly to others, who may not be said to 
have a deserted village, sacred to the tenderest and fondest recollections, 
which it is well that his fancy and his feeling should at times revisit. 

" Goldsmith looked into his heart and wrote. From that great city in 
which his hard-spent life had been diversified with so much care and toil, 
he travelled back to the memory of lives more simply passed, of more 
cheerful labour, of less anxious care, of homely affections and humble joys 
for which the world and all its successes offer nothing in exchange. . . . 

" Sweet Auburn is no more. But though he finds the scene deserted, 
for us he peoples it anew, builds up again its ruined haunts, and revives 
its pure enjoyments ; from the glare of crowded cities, their exciting 
struggles and palling pleasures, carries us back to the season of natural 
pastimes and unsophisticated desires ; adjures us all to remember, in our 
several smaller worlds, the vast world of humanity that breathes beyond; 
shows us that there is nothing too humble for the loftiest and most affect- 
ing associations ; and that where human joys and interests have been, 
their memory is sacred forever ! . . . 

" Beautifully is it said by Mr. Campbell, that ' fiction in poetry is not the 
reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted resemblance ; and this ideal 
beauty of nature has seldom been united with so much sober fidelity as 
in the groups and scenery of The Deserted Village.'' It is to be added 
that everything in it is English, the feeling, incidents, descriptions, and 
allusions ; and that this consideration may save us needless trouble in 
seeking to identify sweet Auburn (a name he obtained from Langton) with 
Lissoy. Scenes of the poet's youth had doubtless risen in his memory 
as he wrote, mingling with, and taking altered hue from, later experiences ; 
thoughts of those early days could scarcely have been absent from the 
wish for a quiet close to the struggles and toil of his mature life, and very 
possibly, nay, almost certainly, when the dream of such a retirement 
haunted him, Lissoy formed part of the vision ; it is even possible he 
may have caught the first hint of his design from a local Westmeath 
poet and schoolmaster,* who, in his youth, had given rhymed utterance to 
the old tenant grievances of the Irish rural population ; nor could com- 
plaints that were also loudest in those boyish days at Lissoy, of certain 
reckless and unsparing evictions by which one General Naper (Napper, 
or Napier) had persisted in improving his estate, have passed altogether 
from Goldsmith's memory.! But there was nothing local in his present 

* Lawrence Whyte, who published (1741) a poem, in whose list of subscribers appears 
Allan Ramsay's name, which describes with some pathos the sufferings of dispossessed 
Irish tenantry : 

"Their native soil were forc'd to quit, 
So Irish landlords thought it fit. . . . 
How many villages they razed, 
How many parishes laid waste I" 

t The earliest and most intelligent attempt to identify Lissoy and Auburn was made in 
1807 by Doctor Strean, Henry Goldsmith's successor in the curacy of Kilkenny West, 
but, at the time he wrote this letter, perpetual curate of Athlone. I quote it as the first 
and best outline of all that has since been very elaborately and very needlessly said on the 
same subject : " The poem of The Deserted Village took its origin from the circumstance 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



127 



aim ; or if there was, it was the rustic life and rural scenery of England. 
It is quite natural that Irish enthusiasts should have found out the fence, 
the furze, the thorn, the decent church, the never-failing brook, the busy 
mill, even the Twelve Good Rules, and Royal Game of Goose ';*' it was 
to be expected that pilgrims should have borne away every vestige of the 
first hawthorn they could lay their hands on ; it was very graceful and 
pretty amusement for Mr. Hogan, when he settled in the neighbourhood, 
to rebuild the village inn and fix the ' broken teacups ' in the wall for se- 
curity against the enthusiasm of predatory pilgrims, to fence round with 
masonry what still remained of the hawthorn, to prop up the tottering 
walls of what was once the parish school, and to christen his furbished- 
up village and adjoining mansion by the name of Auburn. All this, as 

of General Robert Napper (the grandfather of the gentleman who now lives in the house, 
within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the general) having purchased an extensive 
tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or A ukum ; in consequence of which many 
families, here called cottiers, were removed, to make room for the intended improvements 
of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of chang- 
ing the face of his rftw acquisition ; and were forced, ' with fainting steps,' to go in search 
of 'torrid tracts' and ' distant climes.' This fact alone might be sufficient to establish 
the seat of the poem ; but there cannot remain a doubt in any unprejudiced mind when 
the following are added: viz., that the character of the village preacher, the above-named 
Henry, is copied from nature. He is described exactly as he lived, and his 'modest 
mansion ' as it existed. Burn, the name of the village master, and the site of his school- 
house ; and Catherine Giraghty, a lonely widow, 

' The wretched matron, fore' d in age for bread 
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread ' 

(and to this day the brook and ditches near the spot where her cabin stood abound with 
cresses), still remain in the memory of the inhabitants, and Catherine's children live in 
the neighbourhood. The pool, the busy mill, the house where ' nut-brown draughts in- 
spired,' are still visited as the poetic scene ; and the ' hawthorn-bush,' growing in an open 
space in front of the house, which I knew to have three trunks, is now reduced to one ; 
the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of it away to 
be made into toys, etc., in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem. All these 
contribute to the same proof; and the 'decent church,' which I attended for upwards of 
eighteen years, and which ' tops the neighbouring hill,' is exactly described as seen from 
Lissoy, the residence of the preacher." 

* " A lady from the neighbourhood of Portglenone, in the county of Antrim, was one 
of those who visited the Deserted Village in the summer of 1817; and was fortunate 
enough to find, in a cottage adjoining the ale-house, an old smoked print, which she was 
credibly informed was the identical Twelve Good Rules which had ornamented that rural 
tavern, with the Royal Game of Goose, etc., etc., when Goldsmith drew his fascinating de- 
scription of it." — Gent. Mag. vol. lxxxviii. 

The "identical" old smoked print was doubtless Mr. Hogan' s. " When I settled on 
the spot," said that gentleman, giving account of what he had done to a public meeting 
held in Ballymahon in 1819, to set on foot a subscription for a monument to Goldsmith's 
memory, " I attempted to replace some of the almost forgotten identities that delighted 
me forty years since. I rebuilt his Three Jolly Pigeons, restored his Twelve Good Rules 
and Royal Game of Goose, enclosed his Hawthorn Tree, now almost cut away by the de- 
votion of the literary pilgrims who resort to it ; I also planted his favourite hill before 
Lissoy Gate," etc., etc. — Gent. Mag. vol. xc. The proposed monument failed, notwith- 
standing the honourable enthusiasm of Mr. Hogan, the Rev. John Graham, its originator, 
and others. I may add that soon after Mr. Hogan began his restorations, an intelligent 
visitor described them ; and nothing, he said, so shook his faith in the reality of Auburn 
as the got-up print, the fixed teacups, and so forth. But what had once been Charles 
and Henry Goldsmith's parsonage at Lissoy, the lower chamber of which he found inhab- 
ited by pigs and sheep, and the drawing-room by oats, was yet so placed hi relation to ob- 



I2 8 NOTES. 

Walter Scott has said, ' is a pleasing tribute to the poet in the land of his 
fathers ;' * but it certainly is no more. 

" Such tribute as the poem itself was, its author offered to Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, dedicating it to him. ' Setting interest aside,' he wrote, ' to 
which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at pi'esent in fol- 
lowing my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, 
because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Per- 
mit me to inscribe this Poem to you.' How gratefully this was received, 
and how strongly it cemented an already fast friendship, needs not be said. 
The great painter could not rest till he had made public acknowledgment 
and return. He painted his picture of Resignation, had it engraved by 
Thomas Watson, and inscribed upon it these words : ' This attempt to 
express a character in The Deserted Village is dedicated to Doctor Gold- 
smith, by his sincere friend and admirer, Joshua Reynolds.' ' : 

I. Sweet Auburn. Lissoy or Lishoy, which claims the honour of being 
the original Auburn (see extract from Mr. Forster above) is eight miles 
north of Athlone, and almost in the geographical cgntre of Ireland. 
Howitt (Ho?nes and Haunts of British Poets, vol. i. p. 328, Harper's ed.) 
says that it now " consists of a few common cottages by the roadside, on 
a fiat and by no means particularly interesting scene." The ruins of the 
house where Goldsmith's father lived are still to be seen, with " the orch- 
ard and wild remains of a garden, enclosed with a high old stone wall." 

4. Parting. Departing, as often in poetry and in Old English. Cf. 171 : 
"parting life;" also Gray's Elegy, 1 : "parting day," and 89: "parting 
soul ;" Shakes. Cor. v. 6 : " When I parted hence," etc. ; Milton, Hymn 
on Nativ. 186 : " The parting Genius," etc. On the other hand, depart was 
used in the sense of part. In the Marriage Service " till death us do part" 
is a corruption of " till death us depart." Wiclif's Bible, in Matt. xix. 6, has 
" therfor a man departe not that thing that God hath ioyned ;" and Chau- ' 
cer, in Knighfs Tale, 1 136, "Til that the deth departen shal us tweine." 

5. Dear lovely bowers, etc. The ten lines beginning with this were 
Goldsmith's second morning's work on the poem, according to his friend 
Cooke, to whom he read the lines aloud. " Come," he added, " let me 
tell you, this is no bad morning's work ; and now, my dear boy, if you 
are not better engaged, I should like to enjoy a shoemaker's holiday with 
you" (Forster). 

6. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, ii. : 

jects described in the poem, as somewhat to restore his shaken belief. He adds, that, in 
the cabin of the quondam schoolmaster, an oak chair with a back and seat of cane, purport- 
ing to be " the chair of the poet," was shown him, apparently kept "rather for the sake 
of drawing contributions from the curious than from any reverence for the bard. There 
is," he humourously adds, " no fear of its being worn out by the devout earnestness of sit- 
ters, as the cocks and hens have usurped undisputed possession of it, and protest most 
clamourously against all attempts to get it cleansed, or to seat oneself." 

* Colman the younger has recorded (Random Recollections, vol. i.) a more extraordi- 
nary tribute in the land of his adoption : " One day I met the poet Harding at Oxford, a 
half-crazy creature, as poets generally are, with a huge broken brick and some bits of 
thatch upon the crown of his hat. On my asking him for a solution of this Prosopopeia, 
'Sir,' said he, 'to-day is the anniversary of the celebrated Dr. Goldsmith's death, and I 
am now in the character of his Deserted Village? " 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. I2 g 

"Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, 
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw." 

12. Decent. In its original sense of comely (Latin deceits). Cf. Milton, 
77 Pens. 36 : " thy decent shoulders," etc. 

16. When toil, etc. " When a remission of toil allowed play to have 
its turn." 

17. Train. As Hales remarks, this is a frequent word in Goldsmith's 
poems. 

19. Circled. Like "went round" just below. 

22. Sleights. Dexterous feats. The word is rarely used now, except 
in the phrase " sleight of hand." Cf. Macbeth, iii. 5 : " distilled by magic 
sleights ;" Spenser, F. Q. i. 7, 30 : " In yvory sheath, ycarv'd with curious 
slights ;" Id. v. 9, 13 : " slights and jugling feates," etc. 

25. Simply. In a simple manner, artlessly. 

27. Mistrustless. Unconscious, having no suspicion. 

28. Titter 'd. An onomatopoetic word. H. p. 218. Cf. giggle, which 
means a slightly different kind of laughter. 

29. Sidelong. " Probably the long is a corruption of the adverbial ter- 
mination ling, which yet survives in grovelling and darkling'''' (Hales). 
Shakes. {Temp. ii. 1) has flatlong, with which cf. Spenser, F. Q. v. 5, 18 : 
" Tho with her sword on him she fiatling strooke." 

35. Lawn. Here used almost in the same sense as " plain," line 1. 

37. Amidst. Some modern editions have amid, but Goldsmith always 
uses amidst. 

40. Stints thy smiling plain. " Deprives thy plain of the beauty and 
luxuriance that once characterized it " (Hales). 

42. Works its weedy way. A good example of " alliteration's artful aid." 
H. p. 298. 

44. The hollow -sounding bittern. Cf. An. Nat. vol. xi. : "Those who 
have walked on an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented rivers 
must remember a variety of notes from different water-fowl ; the loud 
scream of the wild goose, the croaking of the mallard, the whining of the 
lapwing, and the tremulous neighing of the jack-snipe. But of all these 
sounds there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern. . . . 
I remember in the place where I was a boy, with what terror this bird's 
note affected the whole village." 

51. Ill fares the land, etc. Cf. 295. The repetition of ill is probably, 
as Hales suggests, one of the "negligences of style "that are common in 
Goldsmith's writings. 

52. Where wealth accumulates. Cf. V. of W.: "Wealth in all com- 
mercial states is found to accumulate ; the very laws may contribute to 
the accumulation of wealth, as when the natural ties that bind the rich 
and poor together are broken," etc. 

54. Cf. Gower, Conf. Am. : 

" A kynge may make a lorde a knave ; 
And of a knave a lorde also." 

Also Burns, Cotter's Sat. Night: " Princes and lords are but the breath 
of kings ;" and again, in the familiar song : 

I 



I3 o NOTES. 

"A prince can mak a belted knight, 
A marquis, duke, and a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon his might, 
Guid faith, he mauna fa' that." 

59. Her. " Labour" is personified as feminine. H. p. 146. 

63. See on 17. Cf. 81 below. 

65. See on 35. 

67. The first ed. has "to luxury allied." 

70. Cf. Carew, Disdain Returned: " Gentle thoughts and calm desires." 

74. Manners. See on Trav. 127. 

77. For this and the three following lines the first ed. has the couplet, 

" Here as with doubtful, pensive steps I range, 
Trace every scene, and wonder at the change." 

83. See extract from Irving, p. 123. 

86. Lay me down. For the pronoun see on Trav. 32. 

87. Husband out. Economize. Cf. the use of the noun in Macbeth, 
ii. 1 : " There's husbandry in heaven ; their candles are all out." The 
addition of "out" is peculiar. Wordsworth in one passage has "to 
husband up The respite of the season." 

93. An hare. See on Trav. 34. Whom for which is an inaccuracy not 
uncommon in British writers even in our day. On hounds and horns cf. 
Shakes. T. A. ii. 3 : " Whiles hounds and horns and sweet melodious birds." 

94. She flew. Thus in the early editions; not "he flew," as in some 
modern reprints. 

95. 96. Forster remarks : " This thought was continually at his heart. 
In his hardly less beautiful prose he has said the same thing more than 
once, for, as I have elsewhere remarked, no one ever borrowed from 
himself oftener or more unscrupulously than Goldsmith did. 'A city 
like this,' he writes in letter ciii. of the Citizen of the World, 'is the soil 
for great virtues and great vices. . . . There are no pleasures, sensual or 
sentimental, which this city does rrot produce ; yet, I know not how, I 
could not be content to reside here for life. There is something so se- 
ducing in that spot in which we first had existence, that nothing but it 
can please. Whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we 
toil, or wheresoever we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home 
for tranquillity : we long to die in that spot which gave us birth, and in 
that pleasing expectation find an opiate for every calamity.' The poet 
Waller, too, wished to die ' like the stag where he was roused.' " 

99. How happy he. . The first ed. has " How blest is he," which is re- 
tained by some of the recent editors. On crowns cf. 85. 

102. Cf. The Bee: "By struggling with misfortunes we are sure to re- 
ceive some wound in the conflict : the only method to come off victorious 
is by running away." 

104. Tempt the deep. A Latinism. "Cf. Virgil, Eel. iv. 32 : " temptare 
Thetim ratibus." 

107. His latter end. A common Bible phrase. Cf. Num. xxiv. 20, Job. 
viii. 7, Prov. xix. 20, etc. 

109. Bends to the grave. The reading of the 4th, 7th, and other early 
editions. Some have " Sinks to the grave." 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



J 3i 



in, 112. The rhyme is the same as in 95, 96. 

116. Mingling. Sometimes incorrectly printed "mingled." The suc- 
ceeding lines are a good example of the " correspondence of sound and 
sense." Campbell's Philos. of Rhet. pp. 340-349. 

121. Bafd. Cf. Shakes. J. C. iv. 3 : "I had rather be a dog, and bay 
the moon," etc. 

122. The vacant mind. Cf. Shakes. Hen. V. iv. I : 

" Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave, 
Who, with a body fill' d, and vacant mind, 
Gets him to rest," etc. 

124. Cf. An. Nat. vol. i. : " The nightingale's pausing song would be the 
proper epithet for this bird's music." 

As the nightingale is not found in Ireland, the introduction of the bird 
here is either a Hibernicism or a poetic license. Cf. Byron, note on Siege 
of Corinth : " I believe I have taken a poetic license to transplant the 
jackal from Asia. In Greece I never saw nor heard these animals ; but 
among the ruins of Ephesus I have heard them by hundreds." 

129. This woman is said to have been Catherine Giraghty, or Geraghty. 
See p. 127, footnote. 

130. Flashy. Puddle-like. Wordsworth has " the plashy earth." See 
Wb. 

135. See on 17. 

137. This description of the "village preacher" was written soon after 
he received the tidings of his brother Henry's death, and bears traces of 
the recent grief. Irving says : " To the tender and melancholy recol- 
lections of his early days awakened by the death of this loved companion 
of his childhood we may attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in 
his Deserted Village. Much of that poem we are told was composed 
this summer, in the course of solitary strolls about the green lanes and 
beautifully rural scenes of the neighbourhood ; and thus much of the 
softness and sweetness of English landscape became blended with the 
ruder features of Lissoy. It was in these lonely and subdued moments, 
when tender regret was half mingled with self-upbraiding, that he poured 
forth that homage of the heart rendered as it were at the grave of his 
brother. The picture of the village pastor in this poem, which we have 
already hinted, was taken in part from the character of his father, em- 
bodied likewise the recollections of his brother Henry ; for the natures 
of the father and son seem to have been identical. In the following 
lines, however, Goldsmith evidently contrasted the quiet settled life of 
his brother, passed at home in the benevolent exercise of the Christian 
duties, with his own restless vagrant career : 

'Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change his place.' 

To us the whole character seems traced as it were in an expiatory spirit ; 
as if, conscious of his own wandering restlessness, he sought to humble 
himself at the shrine of excellence which he had not been able to practise." 
142. Passing. Surpassingly, exceedingly ; once a common word in 
this sense. 



1 t ) 2 NOTES. 

Cf. the Dedication to The Traveller: "a man who, despising fame and 
fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of 
forty pounds a year." 

143. Cf. Heb. xii. I. 

145. Unpractised. The 1st ed. has " Unskilful ;" and in 148, " More 
bent to raise," etc. The use of the infinitive ("to fawn" for "in fawn- 
ing") is a Latinism. Cf. 161, 195, 288, etc. 

149. See on 17. 

152. Cf. Hall, Satires: "Stay till my beard shall sweep mine aged 
breast." 

153. Spendthrift. One of an expressive class of words, most of which 
are obsolete; as scapethrift (Holinshed), wastethrift (B. and F.), dingthrift, 
that is, one who " dings " or drives away thrift, as in Herrick (quoted by 
Nares) : 

"No, but because the dingthrift now is poore, 
And knowes not where i' th' world to borrow more." 

155. The broken soldier. Cf. Campbell, Soldier's Dream s: "And fain 
was their war-broken soldier to stay;" also Virgil, y£Vz. ii. 13 : "fracti 
bello ;" and xii. 1 : " infractos adverso Marte." 

171. Parting life. See on 4. 

1 76. Accents. For words, as often in poetry. Cf. Longfellow, Excelsior : 

" And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue." 

178. Cf. Dryden, Good Parson : " His eyes diffused a venerable grace." 
180. Cf. Jasp. Mayne, Mem. of Ben Jonson: 

" For thou e'en sin didst in such words array, 
That some who came bad parts went out good play," 

and Dryden, Brit. Red. : 

" Our vows are heard betimes, and Heaven takes care 
To grant before we can conclude the prayer ; 
Preventing angels met it half the way, 
And sent us back to praise who came to pray." 

182. Steady zeal. It is " ready zeal " in the 1st and some modern edi- 
tions. Goldsmith doubtless changed it on account of the "ready smile," 
three lines below. 

189. Lord Lytton {Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 65) has traced this 
simile to a poem by the Abbe de Chaulieu, who lived 1639-1720, and 
whose verses were popular at the time when Goldsmith was travelling 
on the Continent : 

"Tel qu'un rocher dont la tete 

Egalant le Mont Athos, 
Voit a ses pieds la tempete 

Troublant le calme des flots, 
La mer autour bruit et gronde ; 

Malgre ses emotions, 
Sur son front eleve regne une paix profonde." 

" Every one," adds Lord Lytton, " must own that, in copying, Goldsmith 
wonderfully improved the original, and his application of the image to the 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. I33 

Christian preacher gives it a moral sublimity to which it has no pretension 
in Chaulieu, who applies it to his own philosophical patience under his 
physical maladies." 

194. Unprofitably gay. An English friend writes : " Goldsmith was 
wrong when he wrote this line. The furze is not unprofitable. The cot- 
tager knows how to use it. The green young species give food to horse 
and cow, or donkey maybe, and its old branches make a first-rate fence." 

196. The village master. Goldsmith is supposed here to have drawn 
the portrait of his own early teacher, of whom Irving gives the following 
account : 

" At six years of age he passed into the hands of the village school- 
master, one Thomas (or, as he was commonly and irreverently named, 
Paddy) Byrne, a capital tutor for a poet. He had been educated for a 
pedagogue, but had enlisted in the army, served abroad during the wars 
of Queen Anne's time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regi- 
ment in Spain. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for the 
sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace of Lissoy." 

After quoting lines 193-216, Irving adds : 

" There are certain whimsical traits in the character of Byrne, not given 
in the foregoing sketch. He was fond of talking of his vagabond wan- 
derings in foreign lands, and had brought with him from the wars a world 
of campaigning stories, of which he was generally the hero, and which he 
would deal forth to his wondering scholars when he ought to have been 
teaching them their lessons. These travellers' tales had a powerful ef- 
fect upon the vivid imagination of Goldsmith, and awakened an uncon- 
querable passion for wandering and seeking adventure. 

" Byrne was, moreover, of a romantic vein, and exceedingly superstitious. 
He was deeply versed in the fairy superstitions which abound in Ireland, 
all which he professed implicitly to believe. Under his tuition Goldsmith 
soon became almost as great a proficient in fairy lore. From this branch 
of good-for-nothing knowledge, his studies, by an easy transition, extend- 
ed to the histories of robbers, pirates, smugglers, and the whole race of 
Irish rogues and rapparees. Everything, in short, that savoured of ro- 
mance, fable, and adventure was congenial to his poetic mind, and took 
instant root there ; but the slow plants of useful knowledge were apt to 
be overrun, if not choked, by the weeds of his quick imagination. 

"Another trait of his motley preceptor, Byrne, was a disposition to dab- 
ble in poetry, and this likewise was caught by his pupil. Before he was 
eight years old Goldsmith had contracted a habit of scribbling verses on 
small scraps of paper, which, in a little while, he would throw into the 
fire. A few of these sibylline leaves, however, were rescued from the 
flames and conveyed to his mother. The good woman read them with a 
mother's delight, and saw at once that her son was a genius and a poet. 
From that time she beset her husband with solicitations to give the boy 
an education suitable to his talents." 

198. Truant. The original meaning of this word (see Wb.) was vaga- 
bond, but it is found in this special schoolboy sense in Shakes. M. Wives, 
v. 1 : " Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew 
not what 'twas to be beaten till lately." 



134 



NOTES. 



200. Disasters. The word originally meant the baleful aspect of a star 
or planet ; from the Latin dis and astruni. Cf. Hamlet, i. 1 : " Disasters 
in the sun." Other words of astrological origin are mercurial, jovial, 
saturnine, ascendency, influence, ill-starred, etc. 
203. Circling round. Cf. " circled " in 19. 

205, 206. Aught and fault are an imperfect rhyme, but Pope has used 
a similar one : 

"Before his sacred name flies every fault, 
And each exalted stanza teems with thought." 

It is said that in Ireland, Scotland, and some parts of England, the sound 
of the / is often omitted in the pronunciation of fault. 

207. Village. For villagers, by metonymy. H. p. 85. Cf. Ovid, Fasti, 
ii. 655 : " Conveniunt celebrantque dapes vicinia supplex." 

209. Terms and tides. The former refers to "the sessions of the uni- 
versities and law courts ;" and the latter to " times and seasons " (Hales). 
Cf. Shakes. K. John, iii. 1 : " Among the high tides in the Calendar ;" 
that is, solemn seasons. Noontide, eventide, springtide, etc., are still in use, 
at least in poetry. 

210. Gauge. That is, measure the capacities of casks. 
218. Forgot. See on Trav. 358. 

221. Nut-brown. A simile compressed into one word. Cf. Milton, 
V Allegro, 100 : " Then to the spicy nut-brown ale." The word is also 
applied to a brunette complexion, as in the famous old ballad of " The 
Nut-brown Maid." 

226. Parlour. From the French parler, and meaning originally the 
speaking-room in a monastery — that is, the room where conversation 
was allowed. See Wb. Cf. boudoir from the French boitder, to pout. 

228. Clicked. Onomatopoetic. See on " titter'd," 28. 

232. The twelve good rides. These were, " 1. Urge no healths ; 2. Pro- 
fane no divine ordinances ; 3. Touch no state matters ; 4. Reveal no se- 
crets ; 5. Pick no quarrels ; 6. Make no comparisons ; 7. Maintain no ill 
opinions ; 8. Keep no bad company ; 9. Encourage no vice ; 10. Make no 
long meals ; n. Repeat no grievances ; 12. Lay no wagers." These rules 
were ascribed to Charles I. Goldsmith, in the fragment describing an 
author's bedchamber, speaks of them as "the twelve rules the royal 
martyr drew."* Cf. Crabbe, Parish Register: 

"There is King Charles and all his golden rules, 
Who proved Misfortune's was the best of schools." 

* This fragment, which was afterwards worked over in this passage of The Deserted 
Village, first appears in a letter to his brother Henry, written in the early part of 1759, 
from which the following is an extract : 

"Your last letter, I repeat it, was too short ; you should have given me your opinion 
of the design of the heroi-comical poem which I sent you. You remember I intended to 
introduce the hero of the poem as lying in a paltry ale-house. You may take the follow- 
ing specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which 
he lies may be described somewhat in this way : 

'The window, patch' d with paper, lent a ray 
That feebly show' d the state in which he lay ; 
The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread, 
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread ; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. 



J 35 



The royal game of goose. Not the ordinary game of "fox and goose," 
but an obsolete game -played upon a board with sixty-two compartments. 
It is described in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv. ch. 2. " It is called 
the game of goose because at every fourth and fifth compartment in suc- 
cession a goose was depicted ; and if the cast thrown by the player falls 
upon a goose, he moves forward double the number of his throw." 

234. See description of Mr. Hogan's " restored " ale-house, p. 127, foot- 
note. 

235. Chimney. That is, the fireplace. Cf. Milton, E Allegro, m : 
"And stretch'd out all the chimney's length ;" and Shakes. Cymb. ii. 4 : 
"the chimney Is south the chamber." See Wb. 

239. Obscure it sinks. Sinks into obscurity. 

240. Cf. Horace's address to the wine-jar (Od. iii. 21) : "addis cornua 
pauperi ;" and Burns, Tarn O'Shanter: 

' ' Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, 
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious." 

243. The barber's tale. The garrulity of barbers had passed into a 
proverb. 

244. Woodman, which now means a wood- chopper, used to mean a 
hunter. Cf. Merry Wives, v. 5 : "Am I a woodman, ha? speak I like 
Heme the hunter ?" 

248. Mantling bliss. The foaming cup, " which maketh glad the heart ;" 
an instance of metonymy. Cf. Pope : " And the brain dances to the 
mantling bowl ;" and Tennyson, In Memoriam, civ. : " Nor bowl of was- 
sail mantle warm." For the different meanings of mantle (cf. 132) see Wb. 

250. Kiss the cup. Just touch it with her lips. Cf. Scott, Marmion, v. 
12 : " The bride kissed the goblet, the knight quaffed it up." 

252. See on 17. Cf. 320 and 337. 

258. Cf. Milton,/". L. ii. 185 : " Unrespited, unpitied, unrepriev'd ;" iii. 
231 : " Comes unprevented, unimplor'd, unsought ;" v. 899 : " Unshaken, 
unseduc'd, unterrified ;" Shakes. M. of V. iii. 2 : "Is an unlesson'd girl, 
unschool'd, unpractis'd ;" Byron, Childe Harold: " Without a grave, un- 
knell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown," etc. 

259. Pomp. In its original sense of train or procession. See Wb. 
265. Survey. That is, observe. The omission of the infinitive sign to 

in the next line is exceptional. 

The game of goose was there expos' d to view, 

And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew ; 

The Seasons, fram'd with listing, found a place, 

And Prussia's monarch show'd his lamp-black face. 

The morn was cold : he views with keen desire 

A rusty grate unconscious of a fire ; 

An unpaid reckoning on the frieze was scor'd, 

And five crack' d teacups dress' d the chimney board.' 

"All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaigne's, that the 
wisest men often have friends with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. 
Take my present follies as instances of my regard. Poetry is a much easier and more 
agreeable species of composition than prose ; and, could a man live by it, it were not un- 
pleasant employment to be a poet." 



136 



NOTES. 



268. An happy land. See on Trav. 34. Cf. Cit. of World, i. : " there 
is a wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire." 

274. Prodttcts. Not " product," as in some editions. 

275 foil. See introductory remarks, p. 124. Cf. Horace, Od. ii. 15, for 
a similar complaint that the rich man's palaces, ponds, etc., occupy lands 
once productive and useful. See also Od. ii. 18, 19-28. 

279. Note the transfer of "silken" from "robe" to "sloth." H. p. 86. 

280. Cf. 40 above. 

283. He seems to mean that the country exports more than its surplus 
productions, bartering for foreign luxuries what it really needs for home 
consumption. 

285, 286. We follow the punctuation of the early editions. It is often 
printed thus : 

' ' While thus the land, adorn' d for pleasure all, 
In barren splendour feebly waits the fall." 

287. This use of female for "woman" is now properly considered a 
vulgarism. 

288. Secure to please. Confident of pleasing. See on 145. Cf. Thom- 
son, Autumn, 202 : 

"Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire, 
Beyond the pomp of dress ; for loveliness 
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, 
But is when unadorn'd adorn' d the most." 

293. Solicitous to bless. Anxious to charm, or " to find lovers on whom 
she may bestow her favours." 

295. Thus fares the land. Cf. 51 above. 

297. Verging. As it verges, or tends. 

298. Vistas. Views, prospects. See Wb. 

299. This is the punctuation of the best editions. Some point the 
couplet thus : 

"While, scourg'd by famine, from the smiling land 
The mournful peasant leads his humble band." 

300. Cf. Roscoe's Nurse : " Sinks the poor babe, without a hand to 
save." 

304. To scape. This word is commonly printed as a contraction of es- 
cape, but we find it also in prose ; as in Bacon, Adv. of L. ii. 14, 9 : "such 
as had scaped shipwreck," etc. Shakes, uses it much oftener than es- 
cape. See Wb. s. v. Cf. estate and state, esquire and squire, espy and spy, 
establish and stablish (2 Sam. vii. 13 ; 1 Chron. xvii. 12), and similar pairs 
of words of Norman-French origin. 

305. Stray 'd. Having strayed. Cf. sped in 309. 
313. The 1st ed. has " To see each joy," etc. 

316. Artist. For artisan, as the latter word was sometimes used for 
artist. Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, does not recognize the specialized 
sense of " painter " for artist. Cf. Waller, To the King: 

" How to build ships, and dreadful ordnance cast, 
Instruct the artists, and reward their haste ;" 

and, on the other hand, The Guardian (quoted by Hales) : 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE. I37 

"Best and happiest artisan, 
Best of painters, if you can, 
With your many-colour' d art 
Draw the mistress of my heart." 

317. Long-drawn pomps. Cf. Gray's Elegy: "the long-drawn aisle;" 
and see on 259 above. 

318. Glooms. This verb occurs again in 363, where it is used tran- 
sitively. 

319. Dome. See on Trav. 159. 

322. Torches. Before the introduction of street-lights, people who could 
afford it were preceded by torch-bearers when going abroad at night. 

326. See on 287. Cf. Cit. of World, ii. : " These poor shivering females 
have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty . . . Perhaps 
now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose 
hearts are insensible." 

335. Ambitious of the town. Longing for or aspiring to a city life. 

336. Wheel. That is, spinning-wheel. Of course, country is an adjec- 
tive, and brown a noun. 

338. Participate regularly takes the preposition in, though of is some- 
times used. See Wb. 

342. The convex world. Cf. Virgil, Eel. iv. 50 : " Nutantem convexo 
pondere mundum." 

344. Altama. The Altamaha river, in Georgia. To — in response to, 
or in consonance with. 

348. Day. By metonymy for the heat or light of day, as in 41. Cf. 
Pope, Messiah : "And on the sightless eyeball pour the day." 

352. Gathers death. Collects its deadly venom. 

354. The rattling terrors. The rattle of the rattlesnake. 

355. Crouching tigers. The jaguar and the puma are the " American 
tigers." 

356. Cf. Sir W. Temple (quoted by some of the editors) : 

"To savage beasts who on the weaker prey, 
Or human savages more wild than they." 

358. Mingling, etc. Cf. Virgil, ALn. i. 134 : 

" lam caelum terramque meo sine numine, Venti, 
Miscere, et tantas audetis tollere moles?" 

366. Hung round the bozvers. Some of the early editions have " their 
bowers." 

368. Seats. Abodes, homes ; like the Latin sedes. Cf. 6 above. 

371. Cf. Goldsmith's Threnodia Augustalis : "The good old sire, un- 
conscious of decay." 

373. Conscious virtue. Cf. Virgil, JEn. xii. 668 : " et conscia virtus." 

378. The 1st ed. has "for her father's arms." The meaning of course 
is that she left her lover in England to accompany her father to America. 

384. Silent manliness. Manly silence. 

385. O Lttxury ! For this " third degree of personification," see H. p. 
1 53 foil. 

386. Things like these. " Not referring to anything in the context, but to 
the general subject of the poem, the innocence and happiness of country life/' 



138 NOTES. 

391-394. Cf. Trav. 144. 

397. Methinks. See on Trav. 283. 

398. For the figure ("Vision," so-called) see H. p. 165. 

399. Anchoring. Anchored, at anchor. 

402. "He seems to distinguish between shore and strand, making 
strand mean the beach, the shore in the most limited sense of the 
word" (Hales). 

407. See on 385. 

409. Unfit. Unsuited ; not from any fault or defect in herself, but be- 
cause the times are degenerate. 

413. Cf. Wither's address to the Muse in The Shepherd's Hunting: 

"And though for her sake I'm crost, 
Though my best hopes I have lost, 
And knew she would make my trouble 
Ten times more than ten times, double, 
I should love and keep her too, 
Spite of all the world could do. 

******* 

She doth tell me where to borrow 
Comfort in the midst of sorrow, 
Makes the desolatest place 
To her presence be a grace, 
And the blackest discontents 
To be pleasing ornaments. 

******* 

Therefore, thou best earthly bliss, 
I will cherish thee for this — 
Poesy, thou sweet' st content 
That e'er heaven- to mortals lent," etc. 

416. Fare thee well. In this expression thee probably = thou. See 
Abbott, Shakes. Gr. 212. 

418. Tor?id > s cliffs. There is a river Tornea (or Torneo, as it is some- 
times written) flowing into the Gulf of Bothnia, and forming part of the 
boundary between Sweden and Russia. There is also a Lake Tornea in 
the extreme northern part of Sweden. Cf. Campbell : "Cold as the 
rocks on Torneo's hoary brow." Pambamarca is said to be a mountain 
near Quito. 

419. Equinoctial fervours. Equatorial heat. 

422. See on Trav. 176. 

423. In some of the earlier editions, the couplet is punctuated thus : 

"Aid slighted Truth ; with thy persuasive strain 
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain." 

The "my" for "thy" in some editions is obviously a misprint. 

424. Rage of gain. Rage for gain ; Seneca's "lucri furor." 

426. Very blest. A violation of the rule that very cannot be joined to 
participles ; though blest here may be regarded as an adjective. 

427. The last four lines, Boswell tells us, were added by Dr. Johnson. 

428. Mole. A mound or breakwater at the mouth of a harbour. Cf. 
Cicero, De Off.n.4: "moles oppositae fluctibus;" Horace, Od. iii. 1 : 
" Jactis in altum molibus." 

430. Rocks. That is, natural rocks, as opposed to the artificial " mole." 
The sky = the weather, like the Latin " caelum." 



RETALIATION. 



139 



RETALIATION. 

This poem was the last work of Goldsmith, and was not printed until 
after his death, appearing for the first time on the 18th of April, 1774. 

The following account of the origin of the poem is from the original 
manuscript in Garrick's handwriting, and was first printed in Cunning- 
ham's edition of Goldsmith : 

" As the cause of writing the following printed poem called Retaliation 
has not yet been fully explained, a person concerned in the business begs 
leave to give the following just and minute account of the whole affair : 

"At a meeting* of a company of gentlemen, who were well known to 
each other, and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the 
peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who never would allow a superior in 
any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a hornpipe, the Doctor 
with great eagerness insisted upon trying his epigrammatic powers with 
Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other's epitaph. Mr. Gar- 
rick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the fol- 
lowing distich extempore : 

'Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness call'd Noll, 
Who wrote like an angel, but talk'd like poor Poll.' t 

Goldsmith, upon the company's laughing very heartily, grew very thought- 
ful, and either would not or could not write anything at that time ; how- 
ever, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following print- 
ed poem called Retaliation, which has been much admired, and gone 
through several editions. The public in general have been mistaken in 
imagining that this poem was written in anger by the Doctor : it was just 
the contrary ; the whole on all sides was done with the greatest good 
humour ; and the following poems in manuscript were written by several 
of the gentlemen on purpose to provoke the Doctor to an answer, which 
came forth at last with great credit to him in Retaliation." ^ 

As Cunningham suggests, the above was " evidently designed as a pref- 
ace to a collected edition of the poems which grew out of Goldsmith's 
trying his epigrammatic powers 'with Garrick." 

Irving, after giving the history of the poem, comments upon it as follows : 

" The characters of his distinguished intimates are admirably hit off, 

with a mixture of generous praise and good-humoured raillery. In fact 

the poem for its graphic truth, its nice discrimination, its terse good- 

* At the St. James Coffee-House in St. James Street. 

t This couplet has been printed in a variety of forms, but this is doubtless the correct 
one, as we have it on Garrick's own authority. 



I4 o NOTES. 

sense, and its shrewd knowledge of the world, must have electrified the 
club almost as much as the first appearance of The Traveller, and let 
them still deeper into the character and talents of the man they had been 
accustomed to consider as their butt. Retaliation, in a word, closed his 
accounts with the club, and balanced all his previous deficiencies. 

" The portrait of David Garrick is one of the most elaborate in the 
poem. When the poet came to touch it off, he had some lurking piques 
to gratify, which the recent attack had revived. He may have forgotten 
David's cavalier treatment of him, in the early days of his comparative 
obscurity ; he may have forgiven his refusal of his plays ; but Garrick 
had been capricious in his conduct in the times of their recent inter- 
course : sometimes treating him with gross familiarity, at other times af- 
fecting dignity and reserve, and assuming airs of superiority ; frequently 
he had been facetious and witty in company at his expense, and lastly he 
had been guilty of the couplet just quoted. Goldsmith, therefore, touch- 
ed off the lights and shadows of his character with a free hand, and, at 
the same time, gave a side hit at his old rival, Kelly, and his critical per- 
secutor, Kenrick, in making them sycophantic satellites of the actor. 
Goldsmith, however, was void of gall even in his revenge, and his very 
satire was more humourous than caustic. 

" This portion of Retaliation soon brought a retort from Garrick, which 
we insert, as giving something of a likeness of Goldsmith, though in 
broad caricature : 

' Here, Hermes, says Jove, who with nectar was mellow, 
Go fetch me some clay — I will make an odd fellow : 
Right and wrong shall be jumbled, much gold and some dross, 
Without cause be he pleased, without cause be he cross ; 
Be sure, as I work, to throw in contradictions, 
A great love of truth, yet a mind turn' d to fictions ; 
Now mix these ingredients, which, warm'd in the baking, 
Turn'd to learning and gaming, religion and raking. 
With the love of a wench let his writings be chaste ; 
Tip his tongue with strange matter, his lips with fine taste ; 
That the rake and the poet o'er all may prevail, 
Set fire to the head and set fire to the tail ; 
For the joy of each sex on the world I'll bestow it, 
This scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gamester, and poet. 
Though a mixture so odd, he shall merit great fame, 
And among brother mortals be Goldsmith his name ; 
When on earth this strange meteor no more shall appear, 
You, Hermes, shall fetch him, to make us sport here.' 

" The charge of raking, so repeatedly advanced in the foregoing lines, 
must be considered a sportive one, founded, perhaps, on an incident or 
two within Garrick's knowledge, but not borne out by the course of 
Goldsmith's life. He seems to have had a tender sentiment for the sex, 
but perfectly free from libertinism. Neither was he an habitual game- 
ster. The strictest scrutiny has detected no settled vice of the kind. He 
was fond of a game of cards, but an unskilful and careless player. Cards 
in those days were universally introduced into society. High play was, 
in fact, a fashionable amusement, as at one time was deep drinking ; and 
a man might occasionally lose large sums, and be beguiled into deep 
potations, without incurring the character of a gamester or a drunkard. 



RE TALI A TION. z 4 j 

Poor Goldsmith, on his advent into high society, assumed fine notions 
with fine clothes ; he was thrown occasionally among high players, men 
of fortune who could sport their cool hundreds as carelessly as his early 
comrades at Ballymahon could their half-crowns. Being at all times 
magnificent in money matters, he may have played with them in their 
own way, without considering that what was sport to them to him was 
ruin. Indeed, part of his financial embarrassments may have arisen from 
losses of the kind, incurred inadvertently, not in the indulgence of a 
habit. ' I do not believe Goldsmith to have deserved the name of game- 
ster,' said one of his contemporaries ; ' he liked cards very well, as other 
people do, and lost and won occasionally ; but as far as I saw or heard, 
and I had many opportunities of hearing, never any considerable sum. 
If he gamed with any one, it was probably with Beauclerk, but I do not 
know that such was the case.' 

"Retaliation, as we have already observed, was thrown off in parts, at 
intervals, and was never completed. Some characters, originally intend- 
ed to be introduced, remained unattempted ; others were but partially 
sketched — such was the one of Reynolds, the friend of his heart, and 
which he commenced with a felicity which makes us regret that it should 
remain unfinished : 

' Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, 
He has not left a wiser or better behind : 
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand ; 
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; 
Still born to improve us in every part, 
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart. 
To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, 
When they judg'd without skill he was still hard of hearing ; 
When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 
He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. 
By flattery unspoil'd' 

"The friendly portrait stood unfinished on the easel ; the hand of the 
artist had failed." 

i. Scarron. Paul Scarron, " the creator of French burlesque," born at 
Paris 1610, died in 1660. 

5. Our dean. Dr. Thomas Barnard, a native of Ireland, made Dean of 
Derry in 1768 ; afterwards Bishop of Killaloe, and transferred from that 
see to Limerick. Cumberland (see line 9), in some verses published after 
Retaliation appeared, attempted to apply to wines the characters which 
Goldsmith had appropriated to dishes, and called Dr. Barnard " a bump- 
er of conventual sherry." The Dean replied to his two friends in some 
verses, of which the following formed the conclusion : 

"Your venison's delicious, though too sweet your sauce is — 
Sed non ego maculis offendar paucis. 
So soon as you please, you may serve me your dish up, 
But, instead of your sherry, pray make me — a bishop. ' ' 

Our younger readers may miss the pun in the last line unless we inform 
them that " bishop " was the name of a beverage made of wine, oranges, 
and sugar. 



142 



NOTES. 



6. Our Btirke. Edmund Burke, the eminent statesman and orator 
(1 728-1 797). Dr. Johnson said of him : "The mind of that man is a pe- 
rennial stream ; no one grudges Burke the first place." 

7. Will. William Burke, a kinsman of Edmund, who said of him, 
" He has nothing like a fault^about him that does not arise from the 
luxuriance of some generous quality." He was for a time in the House 
of Commons, and held various public offices at home and in India. 

8. Dick. Richard Burke, a younger brother of Edmund, and a bar- 
rister. 

9. Cumberland. Richard Cumberland (1 732-181 1), a man of versatile 
ability, but not eminent in any one department of literature. He wrote 
essays, pamphlets, poems, plays, novels, etc. 

10. Douglas. Dr. John Douglas (1721-1807), a Scotchman and a cele- 
brated controversialist of that day. He afterwards became Bishop of 
Carlisle, and later of Salisbury. 

11. Garrick. David Garrick (1716-1779), the famous actor. 

14. Ridge. John Ridge, a member of the Irish bar, whom Burke de- 
■ scribed as " one of the honestest and best-natured men living, and in- 
ferior to none of" his profession in ability." His name does not occur 
again in the present poem. 

Reynolds. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the great English paint- 
er. See the Dedication of The Deserted Village, etc. 

15. Hickey. Thomas Hickey, an eminent Irish attorney, known in the 
club as " honest Tom Hickey." 

16. Gooseberry fool. A dish made of gooseberries and cream. See 
Wb. 

23. The good dean. See on 5 above. 

29. Edmund. Burke ; see on 6. 

34. Tommy Townshend. A well-known member of Parliament of that 
day, afterwards Lord Sydney. See 88. 

38. Nice. Scrupulous. 

43. Honest William. See on 7. 

45. [Is there a confusion of metaphors in this passage ? H. p. in.] 

51. Honest Richard. The " Dick " of line 8. He broke a leg in 1767, 
to which accident the poet alludes just below. 

62. The Terence of England. An example of the figure known as an- 
tonomasia. H. p. 84. The allusion to the Latin dramatist needs no ex- 
planation. 

67. Dizen'd. The more common word is bedizened. 

68. A rout. That is, an evening party. 

86. Our Dodds, etc. Dr. William Dodd was a fashionable preacher of 
the time, and noted also as a writer. He came to a bad end, being exe- 
cuted for forgery in 1777. 

William Kenrick was a dramatist and reviewer, and had given lectures 
on Shakespeare. He hated Goldsmith, and had often attacked him 
anonymously. Irving speaks of him as " Goldsmith's constant persecu- 
tor, the malignant Kenrick." 

87. Macpherson. James Macpherson (1738-1796)^ Scotchman, who 
in 1762 published poems attributed to Ossian, "founded in part on Gae- 



RETALIATION. I43 

lie traditional poetry, but so modern in form and expression of the senti- 
mental gloom then fashionable, that they owed their great success to the 
reproduction in new form of living tendencies of thought" (Morley). 

89. Landers and Bowers. William Lauders, a Scotchman and a school- 
master, was the author of a famous literary forgery. He wrote a series 
of papers charging Milton with plagiarism, but Dr. Douglas (see on 10) 
showed that the passages quoted in proof of the charge were fictitious. 
Archibald Bower was another Scotchman, who published a " History of 
the Popes," full of errors and plagiarisms, which were exposed by Dr. 
Douglas. 

115. Ye Kelly s and Wood/alls. Hugh Kelly was an Irishman, and a 
writer of essays, poems, and plays. Johnson used to speak of him as a 
man who had written more than he had read. As a dramatist he was 
regarded as Goldsmith's chief rival, and when She Stoops to Conquer had 
taken the town by storm, the following epigram appeared in the news- 
papers : 

" At Dr. Goldsmith's merry play, 
All the spectators laugh, they say ; 
The assertion, sir, I must deny, 
For Cumberland and Kelly cry. 

Ride, si safiis." 

Another, addressed to Goldsmith, alludes to Kelly's early apprentice- 
ship to stay-making : 

"If Kelly finds fault with the shape of your muse, 
And thinks that too loosely it plays, 
He surely, dear Doctor, will never refuse 
To make it a new Pair of Stays I" 

William Woodfall was the editor of the Morning Chronicle, a leading 
paper of the time, and was especially famous as a theatrical critic. 

116. Commerce. "Interchange of flattery and compliments." 

117. Gncb-street. Now Milton Street,* in London. In the 17th and 
1 8th centuries it was a favourite haunt of literary men, but as its respecta- 
bility declined it became the home of a crowd of inferior authors — poor 
in a double sense — who hid from the bailiffs in its old-fashioned houses 
and dingy courts. Hence the name of Grub-street came to be a synonym 
for that class of writers. 

118. Be-Roscius , d. Lauded as a second Roscius, or as the rival of the 
greatest of Roman actors. 

124. Beaumonts and Bens. Francis Beaumont (1586-1615), associated 
with John Fletcher as joint author of thirty-eight plays. The Bens al- 
ludes of course to "rare Ben Jonson"t (1573—1637). 

125. Hickey. See on 15. 

131. Flat. " Having no opinion of his own." 

138. The reading in some eds. is " a better or wiser." 

* When the name was changed we do not know. Milton's tomb is in the church of 
St. Giles, Cripplegate, close by ; and the sites of his house in Barbican, and of his birth- 
place in Bread Street, Cheapside, are both within a few minutes' walk. 

t The inscription on the tablet to his memory in Westminster Abbey was "O rare 
Ben Jonson," but when the stone was "restored " some years ago it was made to read 
" O rare Ben Johnson," and the blunder has been allowed to stand. 



i 4 4 NOTES. 

145. Raphaels, Correggios. That is, paintings by those masters ; one 
of the most familiar forms of metonymy. H. p. 86. 

146. He shifted his trumpet. Reynolds was so deaf that he had to use 
an ear-trumpet. Cf. La Vie de Le Sage : " II faisait usage d'un cornet 
qu'il appeloit son bienfaiteur. Quand je trouve, disoit-il, des visages 
nouveaux, et que j'espere rencontrer des gens d'esprit, je tire mon cornet; 
quand ce sont des sots, je le resserre et je les defie de m'ennuyer." 

147. By flattery unspoiPd. The manuscript of the poem ended with 
this broken line. It was probably the last that Goldsmith wrote. 

POSTSCRIPT. 

There seems to be no doubt that these lines are Goldsmith's, though 
they were not made public till some time after the rest of the poem. 

1. Caleb Whitefoord, a native of Edinburgh, came to London in early life, 
and was for some years a wine-merchant. A man of varied attainments 
and of facetious disposition, he was a favourite with authors and artists, 
and a frequent writer of both prose and verse under assumed names. To 
the Public Advertiser he contributed humourous letters, " mistakes of the 
press," and " cross-readings." He wrote some epitaphs on Goldsmith, 
Cumberland, and others, which were so sarcastic as to offend his friends ; 
whereupon he wrote an apology, of which the last stanza reads thus : 

" For those brats of my brain 

Which have caus'd so much pain, 
Henceforth I'll renounce and disown 'em; 

And still keep in sight 

When I epitaphs write : 
De mortuis nil nisi bonumP 

1. A grave man. " Whitefoord was so notorious a punster that Dr. 
Goldsmith used to say it was impossible to keep him company without 
being infected with the itch of punning." 

14. The quotation is from Hamlet, v. 1 : " Your flashes of merriment 
that were wont to set the table on a roar." 

16. Wood/all. His friend, Mr. H. S. Woodfall, the editor of the Public 
Advertiser. 



f 









AGITATED SIGNATURE OF GOLDSMITH. 



INDEX OF WORDS EXPLAINED. 



accents (= words), 132. 

Altama, 137. 

an (before h), in, 130. 

anchoring, 138. 

Apennine, 113. 

art, 113. 

artist (^artisan), 136. 

bay, 131. 

be-Rosciused, 143. 
bishop (a beverage), 141. 
bleak, 115. 
bliss, 112, 135. 
boudoir, 134. 
broken, 132. 

cheer, 118. 

chimney (^fireplace), 135. 
circled, 129. 
clicked, 134. 
commerce, 143. 
conforms, 117. 
consigned, 112. 
cower, 117. 

Damiens, 121. 
day (=heat), 137. 
decent, 129. 
depart (=part), 128. 
dingthrift, 132. 
disaster, 134. 
dizened, 142. 
dome, 115. 
dress, 112. 

either, 113. 

fare thee well, 138. 
female, 136. 
ferments, 120. 
fictitious, 120. 
frieze, 118. 
furze, 133. 

gelid, 113. 
gestic, 118. 
glooms (verb), 137. 



God speed, 117. 
goose, the game of, 135. 
gooseberry fool, 142. 
great, the, 120. 
Grub-street, 143. 

husband out, 130. 
Hydaspes, 119. 

Idra, 112. 
imprisoned, 120. 

leveL 117. 

line (^equator), 112. 

Luke, 121. 

manners (=mores), 113. 
mansion, 115. 
mantling, 135. 
me (reflexive), in. 
methinks, 118, 138. 
mistrustless, 129. 
mole, 138. 

Niagara, 121. 

nightly (=nocturnal), 117. 

nut-brown, 134. 

Oswego, 121. 

palmy, 112. 

Pambamarca, 138. 

parlour, 134. 

parting (^departing), 128. 

passing (adverb), 131. 

peculiar, 113. 

plashy, 131. 

pomp, 135. 

port, 119. 

prevails, 112. 

proper, 113. 

rampire, 119. 
recounts, 112. 
redress, 116. 
rocks, 138. 
rout, 142. 

K 



savage (=wild beast), 116. 

scape (=escape), 136. 

scapethrift, 132. 

seats (=homes), 137. 

shelvy, 112. 

sidelong, 129. 

simply, 129.. 

sit (reflexive), in. 

skill (^knowledge), 114. 

sky (=weather), 138. 

sleight, 129. 

sped, 116. 

spendthrift, 132. 

stems (=families), 120. 

strand, 138. 

strong (adverb), 113. 

survey, 135. 

swain, 112. 

tawdry, 118. 

tempt, 130. 

terms, 134. 

tides (=times), 134. 

tigers, 137. 

titter, 129. 

to (=in response to), 137. 

torches, 137. 

Torno, 138. 

train, 129. 

truant, 133. 

twelve good rules, the, 134. 

unfit, 138. 
untravelled, no. 

vernal, 113. 
very (blest), 138. 
vista, 136. 

wastethrift, 132. 
wave-subjected, 119. 
whom (=which), 130. 
woodman (=hunter), 135. 
wrote (—written), 120. 

zealous, 113. 



SHAKESPEARE. 

WITH NOTES BY WM. J. ROLFE, A.M., 

Formerly Head Master of the High-School, Cambridge, Mass. 
ILLUSTRATED WITH WOODCUTS. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. i6mo, Cloth, 90 cts. 
THE TEMPEST. i6mo, Cloth, 90 cents. 
HENRY THE EIGHTH. i6mo, Cloth, 90 cents. 
JULIUS CAESAR. i6mo, Cloth, 90 cts. 

The four volumes in one, $3 00. 



From Prof. F. J. Child, of Harvard University. 

After using the book with an evening class in Shakespeare, Prof. Child 
writes as follows : 

I read your " Merchant of Venice " with my class, and found it in- 
every respect an excellent edition. I do not agree with my friend White 
in the opinion that Shakespeare requires but few notes— that is, if he is 
to be thoroughly understood. Doubtless he may be enjoyed, and many 
a hard place slid over. Your notes give all the help a young student 
requires, and yet the reader for pleasure will easily get at just what he 
wants. You have indeed been conscientiously concise. 

From L. R. Williston, A.M., Head Master of the High-School, Cam- 
bridge, Mass. 
Mr. Rolfe's edition of " The Merchant of Venice " is an excellent one 
for school or general use. The notes contain all the explanations and 
references needful for a critical study of the language, as well as for un- 
derstanding the thought of the play. The extracts from Schlegel, Mrs. 
Jameson, and others, in the Introduction, helping to a better appreciation 
of the characters of the play, are a peculiar recommendation of this edition. 

From Rev. A. P. Peabody, D.D., Professor in Harvard University. 

I regard your own work on this play as of the highest merit, while you 
have turned the labors of others to the best possible account. I want to 
have the higher classes of our schools introduced to Shakespeare chief 
of all, and then to other standard English authors ; but this can not be 
done to advantage, unless under a teacher of equally rare gifts and abund- 
ant leisure, or through editions specially prepared for such use. I trust 
that you will have the requisite encouragement to proceed with a work 
so happily begun. 

Your " Merchant of Venice " seems to me by no means limited, in its 
adaptation, to school use. All who have not access to a somewhat ex- 
tended Shakespearian apparatus need such editions as this ; and there 
are many not unintelligent adult readers of Shakespeare who lose half 
the pleasure and profit of reading him for lack of precisely such aid as 
you supply 



Rolfe's Shakespeare. 



From Prof. J. Dorman Steele, Free Academy, Elmira, N. Y. 

The copy of the " Tempest " is at hand, and very carefully examined. 
We shall use it in the Spring Term. Adoption in our school is, of 
course, the highest commendation I can give. The " Merchant of Ven- 
ice" is now in use and gives unqualified satisfaction. Prior to this, 
Shakespeare's plays were failing to interest the pupils, because of the 
difficulty found in understanding and appreciating the text. Your beau- 
tiful and comprehensive edition is very helpful indeed, and it has quick- 
ened the enthusiasm of the pupils. 

From W. C. Collar, A.M., Master of the Roxbury Latin School, Boston. 

Please accept my thanks for a copy of your " Merchant of Venice." I 
have made a trial of it with my first class, and find it admirably adapted 
for use in the school-room. I think no one who was not an experienced 
teacher and a careful student of Shakespeare could have anticipated and 
supplied so well the needs of the learner ; and, if I may judge from my 
own case, instructors will find the copious references contained in the 
notes very helpful in the preparation of their lessons. Give us a few 
more plays edited on the same plan, and there will no longer be any ex- 
cuse for excluding Shakespeare from our classical and high schools. 

From S. M. Capron, A.M., Master of the High-School, Hartford, Conn. 

In my judgment, you have produced, in " The Merchant of Venice," 
the best and most sensible edition of one of Shakespeare's plays which 
has yet appeared for school use. The publishers have done every thing 
for you in respect to the form and general appearance of the book ; and 
your notes are not only critical, but sufficiently brief and pointed, and, so 
far as I have examined them, they seem to cover the very points in the 
text which particularly need elucidation. 

Go on as you have begun. 

This work has been done so well that it could hardly have been done 
better. It shows throughout, knowledge, taste, discriminating judgment, 
and, what is rarer and of yet higher value, a sympathetic appreciation of 
the poet's moods and purposes. * * * Mr. Rolfe's notes are numerous 
but brief, and are generally well adapted to their purpose, which is that 
of explanation, instruction, and suggestion without discussion. The pe- 
culiarities of Shakespeare's style — which, rarely obscure, is often involved, 
and in which the main thought is sometimes suspended, and even for a 
moment lost sight of amid the crowd of others that itself has called up — 
are pointed out and elucidated ; his allusions are explained j his singular 
use of words, of moods and tenses and cases is remarked upon ; and the 
archaic and transitional phraseology which is found in many passages of 
his plays (positively many, but comparatively very few), are made the oc- 
casion of instructive but unpedantic comment. — N. Y. Times. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Tj&T' Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt 

of the price. 



